Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Open Sesame - Open XML SDK is now open source

Open XML SDK goes open source

Brian Jones is the principal GPM of the Office Development Platform.

Today is an exciting day for Office developers—we’re open sourcing the Open XML SDK on GitHub! We’re eager to work with the community on continual improvements to the SDK’s functionality and scalability, and to explore new platforms and technologies to support developer platforms such as Mono, an open source implementation of .NET Framework. It’s been over seven years since we released the initial preview of the Open XML SDK, and over that time it’s been one of the key tools developers have used for building solutions that consume, create, and modify Office documents.

I encourage you to head over to GitHub and take a look at the project. We’d love your participation! We posted it under the .NET Foundation. In addition to the SDK itself, we opened all of the Open XML conceptual documentation in MSDN for public review/contributions. A living copy of the docs is now in GitHub for you to edit and review. Pull requests welcome!

The Open XML SDK is a key piece of our overall developer platform. The trends around mobile apps connected to the cloud have expanded the role that Office documents can play in solutions. Many of our Fortune 100 customers have built solutions leveraging the SDK, especially in the banking and health care sectors. We average over 10,000 downloads a month, and the SDK is also widely distributed in other software packages, such as accounting tools.

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In another post, we provided a great drilldown into the architecture of the SDK and a ton of great examples.

As you’ve probably noticed lately, we’re making a big push to open a lot of our developer technologies to the community. We have a few really cool projects already in GitHub, like the Office 365 SDK for Android Preview, as well as the Open XML package editor. We’ve shifted the Office extensibility model to use open standards like HTML and JavaScript, and we’re exposing Office 365 data (documents, mail, and calendars) through RESTful APIs leveraging oAuth. You’ll see us continue to do more of this, and we’d love to hear any feedback you might have on our UserVoice.

If you’re already an Open XML developer, this is definitely an exciting day. If you haven’t built solutions yet on Open XML, I strongly encourage you to go take a look and try out some of the examples. You’ll be surprised by what you can build.

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The Microsoft open source wagon just keeps on rolling! The OpenXML spec has been open for a while and now the SDK is too. Heck I wonder what else is going to be opened up? The Fluid UI? Windows Live Writer (please, please, please)? Guess 2014 is going to officially be "The Year Microsoft Opened"...

 

Related Past Post XRef:

Using OpenXML SDK to generate Word documents via templates (and without Word being installed)
Checking for Microsoft Word DocX/DocM Revisions/Track Changes without using Word... (via OpenXML SDK, LINQ to XML or XML DOM)
LINQ to XlsX... Using VB.Net, LINQ, the OpenXML SDK and a little C# helper, to query an Excel XlsX
Using native OpenXML to create an XlsX (Which provides an example of why I highlight tools that make OpenXML easier...)
Generating Xlsx's on the Server? You're using OpenXML, right? With help from the PowerTools for OpenXML?

Official boat-load, as in supertanker, sized OpenXML content list (Insert "One OpenXML content list to rule them all" here)
So how do I get from here to OpenXML? Got a map for you, an Open XML SDK Blog Map…
Where to go to scratch your OpenXML dev info itch…
"Open XML Explained" Free eBook (PDF)
The Noob's Guide to Open XML Dev (If you know how to spell OpenXML but that's about it, this is your Getting Started guide...)

Reusing the PowerShell PowerTools for Open XML in your C# or VB.Net world
PowerShell, OpenXML, WMI and the PowerTools for OpenXML = Doc generation for our inner geek
Because it’s a PowerShell kind of day… PowerTools for Open XML V1.1 Released
OpenXML PowerTools updated – Cell your Excel via PowerShell
Powering into OpenXML with PowerShell

Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office Released – Automate Office documents without Office

Open XML 2.0 Code Snippets for VS2010 (and VS2008 too)
Open XML Format SDK 2.0 Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2008 – 52 C#/VB Code Snippets to help ease your Open XML coding
Open XML File Format Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2005 (Office 2007 NOT required)

Open XML SDK v1 Released

OpenXML Viewer 1.0 Released – Open source DocX to HTML conversion, with IE, Firefox and Opera (and/or command line) support

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