Upload Word.doc > Convert to HTML/Picture?

[Azroth]

Hi everyone!

I'm hoping someone has some suggestions on this one...

I need to allow someone to upload a (Microsoft) word doc when they submit a form. I then need to convert that word doc into HTML (which may contain images?) - Then I will need to store it in MySQL.

Obviously, if I can convert it to HTML I can easily store it. But how do I convert the word doc to html?

Random Thought
Is there any way I can have PHP take a 'snapshot' of it, storing the entire thing as a picture? I don't have to edit it later - I just need to display it as it was written, pictures/style and all.

Any help, suggestions, etc would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Az.....

[trexx]

i guess with PHP alone that would be hard to do, if not impossible.

but there are several tools out there that do something like that. e.g. google uses such a tool to view word-documents as HTML in the search results.

i cannot recommend a certain product, but a quick search with google ("word to html") showed some interesting results. 🙂

[Azroth]

Trexx,

Thanks for the reply!

I have a stupid question then. As I have not done this yet, it may be easier than I'm thinking.

When I upload the word doc and store it in MySQL, do I have to know the name of the doc to call it, or can I simply call the 'column' (associated with the rest of the information) variable like I would everything else?

e.g. - On a simple scale, I have DB columns of say ID, Desc, and Doc. When I pull ID I do it as $ID, Desc as $Desc - etc. When I pull $Doc - will it have the file, or do I have to know the actual name of the file that was uploaded?

Anyone??

Thanks again!!
Az....

[trexx]

every DB table has a unique ID for each record. You decide what that ID is. it may be a numeric ID or it may be the filename (guess that wouldn't be a good idea). Most likely you'll select a single record by its ID. (SELECT * FROM word_files WHERE ID=x)

what you get then, depends again on your concept. you could store the binary data of a word file into the database or you could only store the location on the filesystem (that's what i would do).

[Weedpacket]

Random halfbaked thought - no idea if it's a goer: with PHP running on a Windows server, and Word installed on the server...

Use PHP's COM functions to open Word, get Word to open the uploaded document and then "Save as HTML"; close Word and collect the file(s) that result and store them in some appropriate fashion.

If this approach does work at all, the drawback will be of course that you get that bastardised "Word HTML" rot.