Ubuntu – Edit Libreoffice-Files from Command Line

command linelibreoffice

I want to add lines to a libreoffice calc table from command line. But I have no idea how.
I just figured out how to start libreoffice from command line.

For example what iam looking for:
-The test.ods-file before 

Name      Text
Hans      Bla
Christian BlaBlub

I enter…

ubuntu> [a command -insert] Alf|test -file=test.ods

so that "Alf" and "test" is added as next line in the table.
-The test.ods-file after: 

Name      Text
Hans      Bla
Christian BlaBlub
Alf       test

Best Answer

.ods is an archive. So you will need to extract the archive.

From the documentation:

XML file structure

Documents in OpenDocument file format are stored as compressed zip archives that contain XML files. To view these XML files, you can open the OpenDocument file with an unzip program. The following files and directories are contained within the OpenDocument files:

  • The text content of the document is located in content.xml.

So it is not as simple as

[a command -insert] Alf|test -file=test.ods

since you also need to insert the XML parts.

enter image description here

$ cd ~/tmp/
$ unzip ../test.ods 
Archive:  test.ods
 extracting: mimetype                
 extracting: Thumbnails/thumbnail.png  
  inflating: settings.xml            
  inflating: content.xml             
  inflating: meta.xml                
  inflating: styles.xml              
  inflating: manifest.rdf            
   creating: Configurations2/images/Bitmaps/
   creating: Configurations2/toolpanel/
   creating: Configurations2/progressbar/
  inflating: Configurations2/accelerator/current.xml  
   creating: Configurations2/floater/
   creating: Configurations2/statusbar/
   creating: Configurations2/toolbar/
   creating: Configurations2/popupmenu/
   creating: Configurations2/menubar/
  inflating: META-INF/manifest.xml

When you look at content.xml and you want to add a new row below the last one you would need to add something like this ...

<table:table-row table:style-name="ro1">
<table:table-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string"><text:p>a2a2a2</text:p>
</table:table-cell><table:table-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string">
<text:p>b2b2b2</text:p>
</table:table-cell></table:table-row>

before

<table:named-expressions/>

and then zip the files again (zip -r ../test2.ods . from the directory with the files).

Result:

enter image description here

To edit the file from command line I used this command. I put the example in ~/Downloads and made a tmp/ in there to test. All the commands used for this:

cd ~/Downloads/tmp/
unzip ../test.ods 
sed 's#</table:table><table:named-expressions/>#<table:table-row table:style-name="ro1"><table:table-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string"><text:p>a3a3a3</text:p></table:table-cell><table:table-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string"><text:p>b3b3b3</text:p></table:table-cell></table:table-row>&#' content.xml > content2.xml 
mv content2.xml content.xml
zip -r ../test2.ods .

All you need to do is replace the text segments with your own.

Newer version courtesy of Terdon (it uses variables to make it better readable):

$ from="</table:table><table:named-expressions/>"
$ to="<table:table-row table:style-name="ro1"><table:table-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string"><text:p>a3a3a3</text:p></table:table-cell><table:tab‌​le-cell office:value-type="string" calcext:value-type="string"><text:p>b3b3b3</text:p></table:table-cell></table:ta‌​ble-row>"
$ sed "s#$from#$to$from#" content.xml

The "#" is a separator. If you have a "#" in the text use something else.

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