How it works

• we open LibreOffice with socket open

• we use Python to send commands to LibreOffice through the socket (you should use iptables to block incoming connection on the specified TCP port for security reason)

To open LibreOffice with socket open, use the command line below:

libreoffice \
  --accept="socket,host=localhost,port=2002;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager"

INSTALL for TESTING

• On Ubuntu 14.04

• install python3-uno as a system-wide package as this package is not available via pip:

  $ sudo apt-get install python3-uno

• create virtualenv (probably, with virtualenvwrapper) with --system-site-pacakges:

  $ mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages invrcptexporter

• install required packages from pip:

  $ pip install -r requirements-test.txt

• install poppler-utils from apt as we have to use pdftotext in our tests:

  $ sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

  I have tried a few other alternatives such as extractText() from PyPDF2, it doesn’t work for many cases

• configure ~/.invrcptexporterrc:

  $ cd ~ $ cp /your/project/path/source/invrcptexporterrc .invrcptexporterrc

  adjust settings in this rc file, the most important one is SCRIPT_PATH which is the absolute path to ‘source’ directory

• run the test:

  $ /your/project/path/source/test.sh

  notes: test.sh is a hack (you can see details from comments inside test.sh ), each time you run it, you have to manually close (exit or ctrl+q) the opened libreoffice ui so that the test will continue to run

INSTALL for USER

• install python3-uno as a system-wide package as this package is not available via pip:

  $ sudo apt-get install python3-uno

• install invrcptexporter from pip:

  $ pip3 install invrcptexporter

• use /sample_invoice_list.ods as the template

• the program is currently shipped as a library only, please see sample codes for how to use it from: /source/sample-code/invrcptexporter/