I am excited to announce my new project “OpenXML Package Explorer” extension for Visual Studio Code.
It allows to explore content of Office Open XML packages (*.pptx, *.docx, *.xlsx) inside Visual Studio Code. You can open any valid OpenXML package in Tree View, explore parts inside package, their relationships and content of xml parts (pre-formatted xml with highlighting).
Extension is inspired by windows-only PackageExplorer (lost in CodePlex archive) and Open XML Package Editor for Modern Visual Studios (Visual Studio for Windows) but implemented on top of .NET 5 using F#, Fable, Fable.Remoting, and re-using some pieces from Ionide.
How it works
I believe that source code of this extension can be used as one more sample of Fable-powered VSCode extension. Here is how it currently works:
- F# source code compiled to JS using Fable 3 and bundled with webpack.
- Code that interacts with OpenXML packages is written in .NET and uses the latest version of System.IO.Packaging
- When extension is activated it starts .NET 5 process with API exposed using Fable.Remoting.
- Extension assumes that .NET 5 runtime is installed on user machine but it depends on .NET Install Tool for Extension Authors that should help to install runtime to users that do not have it yet.
- JS bundle runs inside Node.js VS Code Extension Host process.
- Fable.Remoting.Client cannot be used, because it is built on top of XMLHttpRequest that does not exist in Node.js world. Here is feature request for Fable.Remoting.NodeClient that may become a thing one day.
- Current client-server communication is built on top of axios library and Fable.Axios bindings with manually written client.
- Extension is created using LambdaFactory/fable-vscode-demo sample that uses ionide/ionide-vscode-helpers with bindings for VS Code Extension API.
P.S. Many thanks for Krzysztof Cieślak and Ionide team for ionide-vscode-fsharp, ionide-vscode-helpers and fable-vscode-demo and Stef Levesque for vscode-zipexplorer used as reference implementation and inspiration.
Sergey Tihon's Blog 
Seems great. Is there a way to open an OpenXML compliant file that is not an Office file? Or to associate a file extension with the extension?
What file type you want to open? Here is how you can associate file extension https://github.com/stef-levesque/vscode-zipexplorer/issues/16#issuecomment-780976042 (just replace zip with openxml)
Well, it’s a custom in-house format (based on 3MF: https://3mf.io/specification/). Now that I think of it, it’s not OpenXML, but just Open Packaging Convention (OpenXML is a superset of OPC…). Anyway, thanks for the link. I shall try this when I manage to have the extension work on my machine (I posted an issue on your GitHub).
Hi, I am very interested in trying that addin but I cant get it to work.
The only thing i see after clicking on “Explore OpenXML Package” is:
“Starting server on port 20489 …
API server started at http://0.0.0.0:20489“
Strange… Can you please one new issue here https://github.com/sergey-tihon/vscode-openxml-explorer/issues
and post screenshot. Maybe you need to expand
OpenXml Explorerpanel manually?I would benefit from this plugin also. I think I have installed it properly, but I don’t know how to open a .docx file. Please advise.
Action should be visible on the right-click menu on the docx file. You also may want to try OOXML Viewer which allows edit files https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yuenm18.ooxml-viewer
If I could only get the .docx file to appear in the circled area, I think it would work. Link to screenshot:
https://ibb.co/fnh9fFd
Open the folder with excel file in VSCode, then right click on file and Explore OpenXML package then file appear on the panel