How Can I Convert Word and Excel Files to PDFs Using PHP?

Convert Word Documents and Excel Spreadsheets to PDFs Using PHP

Introduction:

Converting Microsoft Office documents into PDFs is a common requirement in many web applications. This article provides a detailed solution using PHP to convert Word (doc, docx) and Excel (xls, xlsx) files into PDFs.

Solution:

The recommended solution involves the following steps:

1. Install OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice provides the necessary libraries for converting Office documents. Request your hosting provider to install the OpenOffice RPM on your server.
2. Use PyODConverter: PyODConverter is a Python script that uses OpenOffice to convert Office documents. Download and install PyODConverter on your server.
3. Create a Conversion Script: Create a plain text file with the following command line instructions:

directory=
filename=
extension=
...
python /home/website/python/DocumentConverter.py /home/website/$directory$filename$extension /home/website/$directory$filename.pdf

4. Initiate Conversion from PHP: In PHP, call the conversion script using exec(), specifying the document's directory, filename, and extension:

exec("/opt/adocpdf {$directory} {$filename} {$extension}", $output, $return_var);

Additional Considerations:

• The PyODConverter script must be placed in a directory outside the web root.
• The "adocpdf" file should be created above the web root and made executable (chmod x).
• Ensure that OpenOffice.org is running before executing the conversion script. A 5-second delay may be necessary for OpenOffice to initialize.

Benefits:

This solution allows you to:

• Convert Word and Excel documents to PDFs without using external libraries or web services.
• Combine multiple files of different formats into a single PDF document using PDFMerger.
• Easily create image files from Word documents if PDF conversion is not feasible.

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