How to clone a TextTable and paste N cloned TextTable below the original TextTable using open office uno API

Question

I have a XTextTable instance. How can I 1) clone the text table (both content and format) into a new XTextTable instance and 2) insert the new instance below the text table using insertTextContent method?

Part of the code is like this

if (element.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.TextTable")):
  table = element
  tableTemplate = doc.createInstance("com.sun.star.text.TextTable")
  #clone properties and content of table to tableTemplate
  #get the position of insertion RANGE
  for datum in data:
     doc.getText().insertTextContent(RANGE,childTable,False)
     #replace placeholder with datum

The code is in python but I can also translate from Java

Answer 1

It seems to me that you have chosen not the easiest way to solve the problem - creating a new object and cloning its properties is a rather laborious process. If you need exact copies of your table, try this algorithm:

Sub CloneTable
Dim oTable As Variant       ' Your object
Dim oCurrentController As Variant   ' Controller will copy-paste content
Dim oViewCursor As Variant  ' Cursor will select some points in document
Dim oTransferable As Variant    ' "Clipboard"

    oTable = ThisComponent.getTextTables().getByName("Table1")  ' Get your object as you can
    oCurrentController = ThisComponent.getCurrentController()   ' Create (get) two important tools
    oViewCursor = oCurrentController.getViewCursor()
    oCurrentController.select(oTable)   ' Move your cursor to the beginning of the first cell of your table
    oViewCursor.goLeft(1,False) ' Move the cursor to the left (no selection), position it right before the table
    oViewCursor.goRight(1,True) ' Move the cursor to the right (this time with a selection), select your entire table
    oTransferable = oCurrentController.getTransferable()    ' Get all the information about a selected part of document
    oViewCursor.goRight(0,False)        ' Remove the selection from the table 
Rem (otherwise the first insert will simply overwrite the existing object and you will end up with one less table than expected)
    For i = 1 to 10 ' Repeat the required number of times
        oCurrentController.insertTransferable(oTransferable) ' Paste an exact copy of the object at the current cursor position
    Next i
End Sub