Convert Word doc docx and Excel xls xlsx to PDF with PHP

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to use PHP to convert Word and Excel files to PDF.

I need to be able to integrate files in different formats into one document, which is why I'm doing this. I'm confident that if I can convert everything to PDF, I can utilize PDFMerger to combine the PDFs into a single file (which uses pdf).

I'm already able to convert various pictures and file kinds to PDFs, but I'm limited to Word Docs. (I believe that using the PHPExcel module, which I already use to generate Excel files from HTML code, I might be able to convert the Excel files.)

If there is a way to create image (jpg) files from the Word documents, that would be workable.

Answer 1

After receiving a request, I'll put the resolution I found here to assist others. It's been a while since I worked on this solution, so I apologise if I missed any important information.

Installing OpenOffice.org on the server is the first step that must be taken. I asked my web host to set up the open office RPM on my VPS. You can accomplish this simply through WHM.

You can convert the files by running command line instructions through PHP now that the server can handle MS Office files. For this, I discovered PyODConverter: https://github.com/mirkonasato/pyodconverter

I created a directory on the server and placed the PyODConverter python file within it. I also created a plain text file above the web root (I named it "adocpdf"), with the following command line instructions in it:

directory=$1
filename=$2
extension=$3
SERVICE='soffice'
if [ "`ps ax|grep -v grep|grep -c $SERVICE`" -lt 1 ]; then 
unset DISPLAY
/usr/bin/soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" -nofirststartwizard & 
sleep 5s
fi
python /home/website/python/DocumentConverter.py /home/website/$directory$filename$extension /home/website/$directory$filename.pdf