I'm looking to develop a court management system that allows court employees to input citizen data relevant to cases like marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The data will be entered into Microsoft Word template files (.dotx) that have specific fields left blank for user input while preserving the non-editable text. My goals are to centralize document management for easy access by all court workers, save the entered data into a database for efficient searching, and ensure the user can fill out only the provided fields while generating a .docx file for storage after completion. The challenge I face is how to display .docx or .dotx files within the application correctly, maintaining the original Word formatting. I've heard of converting .dotx files to HTML for this purpose, but that seems to mess with the layout. So, I need recommendations on which programming language and frameworks would fit this project, as this is my first real venture into software development, and I feel a bit overwhelmed.
3 Answers
If you want to stick with Microsoft technologies, then C# and ASP.NET Core would be solid choices. The Microsoft ecosystem is robust, and using something like the OpenXML SDK for document manipulation could handle your needs. Looks like there’s no need to reinvent Word; just use it alongside your app. Think about letting users work directly on the forms in your app, which will then generate the document in the background.
Honestly, replicating Microsoft Word can be overwhelming, especially for your first project. Instead, I suggest separating the data input from the document viewing. Have users fill out a web form where the fields match your template, which then saves the data to a database. You can create the final .docx file using a library afterward. For tech, using Python with FastAPI or C# with .NET would be great since C# has excellent support for Word files. On the front end, you can use React or even just plain HTML forms. This approach keeps your original templates intact and makes the process smoother overall.
Since you have experience in Java, you might want to consider continuing with that. You could build a web application using Java with frameworks like Spring Boot. The key is to design the forms first, gather the data, and then generate the .docx document programmatically. But if you're worried about displaying Arabic text correctly, that might require a different approach altogether depending on the libraries you use.
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