Starting the Project to build an OpenXML document
Now I am not suggesting that the articles I am posting are delivering insight on best practice. I fully expect that as time goes on and I improve my skills that some of the code I write now will be ripped up and re-done. But I hope that all you out there bothering to read this information will find it helpful in taking the first steps to generating your own solutions.
So, having decided to use VB at the core of my solution and having installed Visual Basic Express 2008. I created a new project (in this case a Windows Forms based project so that I have a chasis on which to test my classes) and then proceeded to work out what references I needed to include:
The most critical of these is of course the DocumentFormat.OpenXml, however this only deals with the main xml parts. The manipulation of the packages is done through System.IO.Packaging which is inferred through the System Reference. I intend to manipulate XML through the XML DOM as this is a technique I am used to (and I prefer it to simple string manipulation). As a consequence I have included the System.Xml reference.
Once this is done I create a small and simple Form so that I can run the project and click “start” when I am ready to go. I will extend this Form as a test chasis to allow me to push sample PASW Data Collection content into the underlying classes to generate the document I need. The first basic form looks like the one below:
