Importing HHC files with West Wind HTML Help Builder

If you’ve never tried it, West-Wind Help Builder can be a life-saver. A great tool for creating both Technical and EndUser help files. On the technical side, it lets you import in class definitions and data dictionaries, making it easier to get a total scope of a project.

But what’s been missing has been a way to move existing help projects (those built using the Microsoft HTML Help Workshop) into Help Builder.

Now , under the hood, WW’s Help Builder uses the Visual FoxPro data file so if you’re intrigued, you can type in USE myHelp.VBP and browse the project to get a good feeling behind all of the data.

So the HTML Workshop builds its table of contents with an HHC file which is a terrible HTML file that looks like this:

• 
  

  So I imported it into a VFP memvar and then populated the West-Wind Help Project’s VBP file. Here’s the full code. It’s NOT polished but I noted it on the FoxShow podcast and wanted to ensure it was up here:

  LPARAMETERS tcFile,tcProj

  IF NOT FILE(tcFile)
  
  RETURN .F.
  
  ENDIF

  IF NOT EMPTY(tcProj) AND NOT USED(“PROJFILE”)
  
  USE (tcProj) IN 0 AGAIN SHARED ALIAS projFile
  
  ENDIF
  
  lcFile = FILETOSTR(tcFile)

  LOCAL lnlines
  
  lnLInes = ALINES(la,lcFile)
  
  LOCAL llStart,lcParent,lcPrevParent

  ** Note: the INDEX is the top level root ID of the HBP file.
  
  lcPrevParent = “INDEX”
  
  lcParent = “INDEX”
  
  llStart = .F.
  
  lnAdded = 0
  
  lnID=3
  
  lcLast = “INDEX”
  
  lnStart = 900
  
  FOR lni = 1 TO lnLines
  
  lcLine = STRTRAN(ALLTRIM(la(lni)),” “)
  
  IF lcLine = “

  ”
  
  llStart = .T.
  
  lcPrevParent = lcParent
  
  lcParent = lcLast
  
  LOOP
  
  ENDIF
  
  IF NOT llStart
  
  LOOP
  
  ENDIF
  
  IF lcLine = “
  • ** New Item
    
    lcName = “”
    
    lcContent = “”
    
    LOOP
    
    ENDIF
    
    IF lcLine=[])
    
    LOOP
    
    ENDIF
    
    IF lcLine=[])
    
    IF FILE(lcFile)
    
    lcContent = FILETOSTR(lcFile)
    
    ELSE
    
    lcContent = “File “+lcFile+” could not be found”
    
    ENDIF
    
    LOOP
    
    ENDIF
    
    IF lcLine=[]
    
    ** Add it
    
    lcID = SYS(2015)
    
    INSERT INTO projFile (pk,parentpk,topic,type,body,helpid,sortorder) ;
    
    VALUES (lcID,lcParent,lcName,”HEADER”,lcContent,lnID,IIF(lcParent=”INDEX”,lnStart,0))

    IF lcParent=”INDEX”
    
    lnstart = MAX(0,lnStart-100)
    
    ENDIF
    
    lnID = lnID+1
    
    lcLast = lcID
    
    lnAdded = lnAdded+1
    
    ENDIF
    
    IF LcLine = [

  ]
  
  lcParent = lcPrevParent
  
  ENDIF
  
  ENDFOR

  ** Now the rest of this code was written to clean up some of the garbage that came in with those old HTML files.

  SELECT projfile
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  REPLACE ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,[])
  
  replace ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,”<","<<")
  replace ALL body WITH STRTRAN(body,”>”,”>>”)
  
  ? lnAdded

  Thinking back, I could likely have just used STREXTRACT for some of these but I needed something quick and dirty and this definitely does the trick. Also note that one of other cool things it does is IMPORT in the actual source.

  You’ll still have a lot of clean-up work to do but not a lot of re-writing.

  West Wind HTML Help Builder

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