Re: reading microsoft word, excel, pdf document text

On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 13:20, Erick Papadakis wrote: > hi david, > > thanks for the note. ok, here is what i want to do. i > want my users to upload WORD, XLS, PPT and PDF files. > when they upload, i store these files in the temp > directory, grab the text from them, and then put it > into my database for later searching. i dont care > about the formatting, i only care about the text > because i need the keywords later for searching. > > can i run some sort of a parser on the server side > like the wvware.com's word parser and just call it > through php? i have not been able to figure out how to > do this using php. > > i would really appreciate any ideas and suggestions! > > thanks/erick OK - do you have the relevant parsers? There are specific (Unix) tools available for PDF (pdftotext or acrobat reader) and Word; I mentioned some of that in an earlier mail. For Excel you could probably use (Unix again) just the Unix command strings to get the text - same might work for Powerpoint but if some dipstick has created a graphics-only presentation you won't get much that's useful. As I mentioned previously, you'll probably want to run the parser[s] from PHP using one of the Program execution functions; exec, system or the backtick operator should do what you want. How you capture the output will of course depend on how the output is delivered - see the docs for the particular parser. None of the above is probably relevant if your server is Windows. -- David Robley | WEBMASTER & Mail List Admin RESEARCH CENTRE FOR INJURY STUDIES | http://www.nisu.flinders.edu.au/ AusEinet | http://auseinet.flinders.edu.au/ Flinders University, ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA