Excel and Word docs to html

dominant

Is it practicable?

leatherback

Hi,

You CAN have word/excel create HTML files. THey are very messy and extremely large though.

I save the files as txt files and runa routine over them to create lists etc. (Although I always get the same layouout, which is predictable in converting).

I would be interested if somebody cracked the MS coding of WORD?EXCEL files.. Then you can create your own code perhaps.

dominant

Is there any relevant tutorial? Or info concerning this point?

Should i make my own code or any libraries will do this job for me?

pskZero7

Hi,

You can manipulate Excel files in PHP using ODBC functions, but it will work on M$ Windows platforms only coz it uses DSN (Data Source Name) as ODBC data sources. Moreover it does not work fine with special cell types like list boxes or when different data types are mixed in the same column, those bugs have to do with the maner ODBC converts mixed-types columns into one-type fields.
You can also check http://www.wotsit.org to retrieve XLS spreadsheets and DOC binary formats so that you can write your own parsers, but I guess it would be a hard work...

regards

dominant

I suspect that these 2 types of files must be saved as a blob in Mysql, am i right?

pskZero7

I think you're right, those 2 file formats are binary formats, not ASCII so the only way to be sure to keep a tidy code would be a BLOB field, or maybe to base64_encode() the files.
I think your files would be corrupted if you do not store them in a BLOB, anyway isn't it the only type big enough to store an entire file ?

dominant

IS there any free script to do the job? ie Upload a xls, or doc, store them in a blob field and then represent the tables or the text through html