backend document data merge & conversion

[nicholak]

Hi. This is my first post so please be gentle.

 

I am looking for a solution to save me loads of time. A potential client has alot of forms which we wish to present to their customers at the end of an application process as a permanent record of their application. The forms are word docs.

 

I was hoping it were possible to easily convert these forms to an open document or pdf template such that the fields can be defined for dynamic data population on a linux server from mySQL before outputting these to the use for saving/printing/emailing etc.

 

If anyone can suggest some inexpensive (read free...) solutions for this it would be most appreciated.

 

Regards

 

Nicholas

[gerkintrigg]

If you have a lot of forms as you say, there are scripts out there to convert Word documents into plain text and vice-versa.

 

I had one a while back, but have since formatted it (sorry). I think there may be a tutorial or two online.

 

If you only had one or two forms, I'd recommend making them in PHP yourself - it has the added advantage of you being being able to customise the validation. You'll still need to do that anyway though.

 

Unless you're good with PHP it'll be a boring job (it probably will be anyway) - most PHP programmers dislike forms because of all the validation work involved.

 

It's probably easier to write a script to email / save the document to the server than change them... then it'll be a boring job of making all the documents open and re-writable rather than read-only.

 

Could you not just offer the word document for download - ask them to change it and email it back to you?

If you want it to be saved to the server, just check out a good file upload script. the PHP freaks tutorials are good for that.

 

Hope this helps