body_append_context: Fast Append context to a Word document

In officer: Manipulation of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint Documents

Fast Append context to a Word document

Description

This function is used to append content to a Word document in a fast way.

It does not use the XML tree of the document neither the cursor that is responsible for increasing the performance of Word document generation when looping over a large number of elements.

This function must be used with the write_elements_to_context() and body_append_stop_context() functions:

1. body_append_start_context() creates a context and returns a list with the context and the file connection.

2. write_elements_to_context() writes the elements to the context file connection.

3. body_append_stop_context() closes the file connection and replaces the XML in the document with the new XML.

Usage

body_append_start_context(x, additional_ns = character())

write_elements_to_context(context, ...)

body_append_stop_context(context)

Arguments

x	an rdocx object
additional_ns	a named character vector of additional XML namespaces to be added to the root node of the document. The names of the vector are the namespace prefixes and the values are the namespace URIs. This argument is useful when the elements to be added to the document require additional namespaces that are not already present in the document and not part of the xml generated by to_wml(). Simple users are not expected to use this argument. It is mainly intended for developers of officer extensions.
context	the context object created by body_append_start_context().
...	elements to be written to the context. These can be paragraphs, tables, images, etc. The elements should have an associated to_wml() method that converts them to WML format.

Value

body_append_start_context() returns a list representing the context that contains:

• doc: the original document object

• file_con: the file connection to the context

• file_path: the path to the context file

• final_str: the final XML string to be appended to the document later when calling body_append_stop_context().

This object should not be modified by the user but instead passed to write_elements_to_context() and body_append_stop_context().

write_elements_to_context() returns the context object.

body_append_stop_context() returns the rdocx object with the cursor position set to the end of the document.

See Also

Other functions for adding content: body_add_blocks(), body_add_break(), body_add_caption(), body_add_docx(), body_add_fpar(), body_add_gg(), body_add_img(), body_add_par(), body_add_plot(), body_add_table(), body_add_toc(), body_import_docx()

Examples

library(officer)

doc <- read_docx()
doc <- body_add_par(doc, value = "blah blah blah", style = "Normal")

z <- body_append_start_context(doc)

for (i in seq_len(50)) {
  write_elements_to_context(
    context = z,
    fpar(
      "Hello World, ", i,
      fp_p = fp_par(word_style = "heading 1")),
    fpar(run_pagebreak())
  )
}
doc <- body_append_stop_context(z)


print(doc, target = tempfile(fileext = ".docx"))

officer documentation built on Sept. 9, 2025, 5:30 p.m.