10 Tips for PHP scripts (from ZDNet)--php and COM

Tricks | scripting PHP and COM

If you're an adventurer and you're running PHP on a CGI, ISAPI, or Apache version of a Windows system, you can also get the COM functionality of the system. Now, the job of interpreting COM (Microsoft's Component Object model) has been left to Microsoft and the voluminous books to complete. However, there is nothing wrong with dot com, and below is a trivial piece of code (no pun intended for very common).

This little snippet of code uses PHP to start 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?
echo "Loading Word, v. {$word->version}<br>";

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 ...";
?>

Let's say you're running an intranet Web site that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database, and your users need data in Excel format. Then you can have PHP execute the necessary SQL queries and format the output, then use COM to start Excel, transfer the data to it, and then store the file in the user's desktop system.