Apache POI get line breaks from XWPFRun

Question

I have a problem reading whitespaces from a docx file using Apache POI 3.15. I have a Word document with line breaks in it, when reading the file via apache poi I cannot find a way to get those linebreaks. When I Call paragraph.getParagraphText() the Text is returned with the line breaks. When I iterate over the XWPFRun objects I only get the text and formatting, but no information about line breaks.

This is the code I use. The br,tab,cr and separator lists are always empty.

        XWPFDocument document = new XWPFDocument(fis);
    List<XWPFParagraph> paragraphs = document.getParagraphs();

    for(XWPFParagraph paragraph : paragraphs) {
        //System.out.println(paragraph.getParagraphText());
        for(XWPFRun run : paragraph.getRuns()) {
            CTR ctr = run.getCTR();
            List<CTBr> brList = ctr.getBrList();
            List<CTEmpty> tabList = ctr.getTabList();
            List<CTEmpty> crList = ctr.getCrList();             
            List<CTEmpty> separatorList = ctr.getSeparatorList();
            String text = run.getText(run.getTextPosition());
            String color =run.getColor();
            boolean bold = run.isBold();
            boolean italic = run.isItalic();
            System.out.println("text: " + text + " color: " + color + " bold: " + bold + " italic: " + italic); 

            for(CTEmpty cr : crList) {
                System.out.println(cr);
            }
        }           
    }

Is using the CTR Object to correct way to go or is there another way to get those linebreaks?

Word Example

Could it be that the line breaks are not encoded in the CT classes, but are new line characters embedded in the runs? Could you attach a sample document that exhibits the issue? — jmarkmurphy, Mar 20 '17 at 11:03
Great question. It’s also not clear in Apache poi how to iterate the elements inside a run according to their natural order. For example: text, br, text — Nathan B, Oct 14 '20 at 22:20

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 20 '17 at 12:23

2

I found a solution to get the line breaks. Normal enters are returned as own paragraphs without text with a spacingAfter value. Soft enter within a paragraph are returned as breaks via run.getCTR().getBrList

answered Mar 20 '17 at 12:23

Martin

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1
9

1

But how can we know their position relative to the text element in a run? For example if we have text,br,text, how can we get the list of all elements in a run? – Nathan B Oct 15 '20 at 01:10

Apache POI get line breaks from XWPFRun

1 Answers1