Get the contents of a document part from a package

This example reads the raw XML payload of the Wordprocessing comments part from a .docx package.

The comments part is an optional child of the main document part. In Rust, that optional relationship is represented as Option.

Comments element

The comments part root is w:comments. It contains the comments defined in the current WordprocessingML document. A typical part contains zero or more w:comment children:

<w:comments xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main">
  <w:comment w:id="0" w:author="Author">
    <!-- comment content -->
  </w:comment>
</w:comments>

The schema shape is a sequence of comment elements with minOccurs="0" and maxOccurs="unbounded".

Read the comments part

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
pub fn read_comments_part(path: &Path) -> Result<Option<String>, Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
  let document = WordprocessingDocument::new_from_file(path)?;
  let main_part = document.main_document_part()?;
  let Some(comments_part) = main_part.wordprocessing_comments_part(&document) else {
    return Ok(None);
  };

  Ok(comments_part.data_as_str(&document)?.map(str::to_owned))
}
}

The function returns:

• Ok(Some(xml)) when the package has a comments part and the part data is valid UTF-8.
• Ok(None) when the main document part has no comments part relationship.
• Err(_) when the package cannot be opened, the main document part is missing, or the part data cannot be read as text.

Raw part data vs. root elements

Use raw part data when you need to inspect or copy XML exactly as stored in the package.

Use root_element when you want ooxmlsdk to parse the part into the generated schema type for that part. Parsing is better when you want typed access to elements and attributes; raw data is better for simple pass-through and diagnostics.