Source Code for "Java LibreOffice Programming" (JLOP) Book

This repository contains source code for the "Java LibreOffice Programming" (JLOP) book. The book is written by Dr. Andrew Davison and is available from here. A slightly updated version of the book is also available from Github pages, and its source text is also available.

As the name of the book implies, the source code is written in Java. To compile and run, you should have Java development kit (JDK) installeed on your system.

Accompanied Scripts

The scripts/ folder contains scripts to build and run the code. These new scripts are usable on both Linux/macOS (.sh files) and Windows (.bat files).

Build

To build the code, first you should get the required external libraries. To do that, go to the lib folder and use the download script. You may have to unzip some of the files manually. The script uses wget on Linux/macOS, and curl on Windows.

On Linux/macOS:

cd lib
./download.sh

On Windows:

cd lib
download.bat

Note: If you use Windows older than Windows 10, you may have to download curl.exe manually.

After download is complete, you need to build Utils.jar. To do that:

On Linux/macOS:

cd Utils
../scripts/compile.sh
./toJar.sh

And on Windows:

cd Utils
..\scripts\compile.bat
toJar.bat

Then you should have Utils.jar in Utils/ folder.

To run the examples, you should got to a directory, and use the run script.

On Linux/macOS, one can run the HelloText example from the text/ folder this way:

cd text
../scripts/compile.sh
../scripts/run.sh HelloText

And on Windows:

cd text
..\scripts\compile.bat
..\scripts\run.bat HelloText

Other examples can be run with almost the same syntax. Many of the .class files can be run this way. Please note that running compile.sh only once in each folder is enough. Sometimes, you have to run additional commands, which are usually described in the book, or in the README files.

Known Issues

Not all of the examples currently run perfectly. Some of the problems are as follows:

1. Examples related to text to speach (freetts) has problems because of the problems in freetts itself.

2. The idlc tool is removed from recent versions of LibreOffice, and now one is supposed to use unoidl-read/unoidl-write instead. javamaker is used in the examples with .idl files to generate code. For example, to compile files in addin folder, one has to run this command to generate appropriate classes for Doubler:

/opt/libreoffice7.5/sdk/bin/javamaker /opt/libreoffice7.5/program/types.rdb /opt/libreoffice7.5/program/types/offapi.rdb Doubler.idl

In Windows, that would be:

"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\sdk\bin\javamaker.exe" "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\types.rdb" "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\types\offapi.rdb" Doubler.idl

3. jaxb has a small problem with xjc. You have to change jaxb-ri\bin\xjc.sh (or jaxb-ri/bin/xjc.bat) to use javax.activation-api.jar instead of javax.activation.jar. In Windows, one should also change lib/relaxngDatatype.jar to mod/relaxng-datatype.jar in the same file. This is documented in issue 1273.

The command in filter folder to generate code from pay.xsd is:

../lib/jaxb-ri/bin/xjc.sh -p Pay pay.xsd

In Windows, it would be:

..\lib\jaxb-ri\bin\xjc.bat -p Pay pay.xsd

4. Processing the two files clubs.xsd and weatherMod.xsd currently does not pass.

5. Some of the scripts are Window-only at the moment. This also reflects in part of the utility code in Base.java, Lo.java and JMail.java.

6. Several .bat files are still in the folders. These are temporarily preserved, and the plan is to remove them in the future. Most of the scripts will remain in scripts folder.