10 Tips for PHP Scripting (6)_PHP Tutorial

PHP and COM
If you are an adventurous person and you are running PHP on a Windows system using a CGI, ISAPI or Apache module version, then you can also get the COM functionality of the system. Now, the job of explaining COM (Microsoft's Component Object Model) is left to Microsoft and those big books. However, there's nothing wrong with knowing a little bit about COM, and here's a common (no pun intended, very common) little snippet of code.

This small snippet of code uses PHP to launch Microsoft Word in the background, open a new file, type some text, save the file and then close the application:

// create a reference to a new COM component (Word)
$word = new COM("word.application") or die("Can't start Word!");

// print the version of Word that's now in use
echo "Loading Word, v. {$word->Version}
";

// set the visibility of the application to 0 (false)
// to open the application in the forefront, use 1 (true)
$word->Visible = 0;

// create a new document in Word
$word-> Documents->Add();

// add text to the new document
$word->Selection->TypeText("Testing 1-2-3...");

//save the document in the Windows temp directory
$word->Documents[1]->SaveAs("/Windows/temp/comtest.doc");

// close the connection to the COM component
$word->Quit();

// print another message to the screen
echo "Check for the file...";
?>

Suppose you are running an intranet Web site that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database, and your users need the data in Excel format. Then, you can have PHP perform the necessary SQL queries and format the output results, then use COM to launch Excel, transfer the data to it, and finally store the file on the user's desktop system.