We have a website which needs the ability for the admin to upload a word document into a converter and have it convert it to pdf format that they can make available to certain people. this must be fully automated, no user interaction other than uploading initially can be allowed while it creates the pdf.

any ideas? this needs to almost be 'plug n play' as there is literally no development dollars available for this. I have to believe someone has created such a thing already.

the web server has no X installed. We do not mind if it is a commercial product, we just need it to work and be easy to install.

Any ideas? Suggestions?

Cody

there is a doc2pdf project available for download on linux in freshmeat.net site. you can download it and create a shell script which will convert the document to pdf file on an unload folder. No idea with any plugin available for webserver (apache etc.).
see if that is useful.

-Rahul.

The normal way of creating pdf from word is to print using acrobat distiller.

While there is no obvious reason that a server could not be tought to do this automatically, why not simply convert the file and post the pdf???

If using windows PCs I suggest pdfcreator. No need for a server.

they can't make the .pdf locally? then upload that for people to browse?

You could do as rahulk mentioned, use .php to invoke the shell script on the uploaded file, converting it to .pdf and moving that .pdf into a folder available from your web server. This can be invisible to the user and their browser then they get a link to the .pdf??

I still think it's easier for them to upload the .pdf...

well, the problem is the people going to do this are bank officials most of which have literally no clue and some are quite afraid of computers.

they want to go to their website and click a link that prompts them to fill in the doc filename on their computer, then it will grab that, convert it to pdf and automatically place a link to the pdf for download/view by other officials. their specification in this for some reason i know not, is it must be in pdf. since there will be several people supplying documents, and the list of people may not be the same from week to week, we cannot provide them with a local converter.

this has to be completely automated under apache with no interaction.

we can easily provide the file xfer and autolinking code it is the cmdline conversion program we lack.

if we have to use a windows solution it must again be cmdline automation that can be reached by instructions from the main website and the windows converter machine will do nothing but convert and be available only on our local private network and only to that particular web server. we will never expose the internet to a windows machine. far too dangerous and costly in maintenance.

i agree totally however that is not how this has to work. local document conversion, according to my boss, is not an option.

will check that out. thanks.

A few references to get you started..

http://www.goermezer.de/content/view/19/357/ - actually look at the main site as well he does quite a bit with PDF.. http://www.goermezer.de/

http://www.phparch.com/issuedata/art...article_25.pdf

http://www.weberdev.com/get_example-4023.html

http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/word-...-php-word2pdf/

http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/