php & excel files?

[aviendha]

Hello & thank you for reading my question.

I need to be able to click on a link in a menu & have it pull up an excel spreadsheet that is located on the server. I want the user to be able to update the spreadsheet & then save the file back to the server. I can click the link & show the currently saved spreadsheet from the server, but I can't figure out how to save any changes.

There is a save button on top of the excel sheet as usual, but I can't figure out how to make it work (maybe it is one of those really easy things I seem to get hung up on?). I've done a little research, but most of the topics talk about doing this with a database. We would rather just save the file on the server. Is there a reason we shouldn't be doing that? I also have a book that talks about uploading, but it doesn't really make sense to me in the use that I need.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[statrat]

check out the COM functions in the PHP manual.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.com.php

there's also a fairly old article on this site about it:
http://www.phpbuilder.net/columns/alain20001003.php3

maybe this is overkill though.

[aviendha]

Thank you for the links, statrat. I've actually read part of the second before, but I must have been tired because I didn't realize then that there was more than one page. I'm not fully understanding the COM stuff, but I wanted to pose this question for opinions.

What is the best method to use for this? My file is an excel sheet for a treasury report that is updated by the treasurer often. The treasurer will be the only one with access to this report. He/she needs to show the report, make changes, then save the report back to the server, sometimes printing it as well.

I think I could do this using file uploading, saving to the MySql database, or COM. Does anyone have ideas about which method would be best, or would/would not work? In the meantime I will continute trying to understand COM 😕

Thank you.

I am using php with Apache & Linux if that makes a difference.

[aviendha]

I've been reading about COM, the best I can figure out is that I can't use it because this system is Linux. Can anyone offer any help regarding alternatives (either the ones I'm trying to figure out above or other ones)? I'm still having trouble with it.

Thank you.

[stolzyboy]

you are correct, you will NOT be able to use the COM object with a linux box