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=[ lcName = STREXTRACT(lcLine,[value="],[">])
    LOOP
    ENDIF
    IF lcLine=[ lcFile = STREXTRACT(lcLine,[value="],[">])
    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