Trying to read content of a document in PHP

[aldrin151]

Anyone know how to open a different application beside MS word, or excel for example in PHP to be able to read text content...I have tried the below code and works trying to open and read a word .doc file and then close word in the background...my only problem is that I'm trying to use a UNIX or Linux server and not a Windows to make this work...any solutions will be greatly appreciated!  Thanks 

 

<?php

$word = new COM("word.application") or die ("Could not initialise MS Word object.");

$word->Documents->Open(realpath("test.doc"));

 

// Extract content.

$content = (string) $word->ActiveDocument->Content;

 

echo $content;

 

$word->ActiveDocument->Close(false);

 

$word->Quit();

$word = null;

unset($word);

 

?>

[Mchl]

There's OpenOffice

 

Thing is, COM extension is Windows specific.

[aldrin151]

Thanks Mchl, I saw openoffice the only problem is I can't find what you specify in the php code when you call the openoffice application

 

example for word I say: new COM("word.application")

 

[Mchl]

You won't be able to use COM on Linux/Unix server, so does it matter?

[aldrin151]

Sure, but is there a way to call Openoffice, meaning what do you specify in the code to tell openoffice or some other application to open in the background?

[Mchl]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.exec.php perhaps?

[aldrin151]

thanks for the referral, I'll look it up