Using PHP to convert DOCX to HTML
Zamzar offers a simple file conversion API to convert files from your applications with support for 100's of formats. Below we have listed an example to convert a DOCX file to HTML using PHP. We also support a variety of other programming languages.
If you have any questions check out our comprehensive FAQ which contains further information on how to use the API.
PHP Code Sample
Our example code assumes that you're using PHP 5.3 or newer.
To convert your first file with the Zamzar API, send an HTTP request to POST
https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/jobs containing your source file, and the your
desired target format. If the source file is on the web or in S3, send us the URL: the
source file doesn't need to hit your servers.
<?php
$endpoint = "https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/jobs";
$apiKey = "GiVUYsF4A8ssq93FR48H";
$sourceFile = "https://s3.amazonaws.com/zamzar-samples/sample.docx";
$targetFormat = "HTML";
$postData = array(
"source_file" => $sourceFile,
"target_format" => $targetFormat
);
$ch = curl_init(); // Init curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $endpoint); // API endpoint
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postData);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Return response as a string
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $apiKey . ":"); // Set the API key as the basic auth username
$body = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$response = json_decode($body, true);
echo "Response:\n---------\n";
print_r($response);
Your source file is now being converted. Send an HTTP request to GET
https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/jobs/$jobId to check its progress. The response
will also give you details about your converted file.
<?php
$jobID = 15;
$endpoint = "https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/jobs/$jobID";
$apiKey = "GiVUYsF4A8ssq93FR48H";
$ch = curl_init(); // Init curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $endpoint); // API endpoint
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Return response as a string
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $apiKey . ":"); // Set the API key as the basic auth username
$body = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$job = json_decode($body, true);
echo "Job:\n----\n";
print_r($job);Once the status of your job is successful, your converted file is ready to
download. Send an HTTP request to GET
https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/file/$fileId/content to download it. We store
your files for a day by default, and for longer on our paid plans.
<?php
$fileID = 3;
$localFilename = "converted.html";;
$endpoint = "https://sandbox.zamzar.com/v1/files/$fileID/content";
$apiKey = "GiVUYsF4A8ssq93FR48H";
$ch = curl_init(); // Init curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $endpoint); // API endpoint
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $apiKey . ":"); // Set the API key as the basic auth username
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, TRUE);
$fh = fopen($localFilename, "wb");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fh);
$body = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo "File downloaded\n";If you like what you see and want to start converting files under your own API account then please click the "Get Started Now" button to signup for your own API account. Please feel free to get in touch with us should you have any specific questions or refer to our extensive docs and FAQ for further information.
Why use Zamzar?
-
Hosting
Don't worry about hosting and using your own servers we do this for you.
-
S3 Integration
Automatically import and export to S3 with 2 lines of code.
-
Simple Pricing
Fixed price monthly accounts which come bundled with conversion credits.
-
Great Support
Our support team is staffed by software developers who will help to fix your problem.
-
Conversion Experts
File conversion experts, having converted 350 million files over the past decade.
Using DOCX with PHP
You could consider using an open source library (licensed under LGPL version 3) – PHPWord. This is a widely used tool online with fairly detailed documentation. In terms of manipulation of the documents it is a good solution, but does have some limitations when converting into other formats. It is certainly a tool that is worth trialling, as is quite widely used and updated regularly.
Another open source option is to use LibreOffice Writer. It offers both a graphical and a command line interface for manipulation and conversion. It is unfortunately fairly limited in its support for PHP, but you could consider utilising both LibreOffice and Unoconv. There is a good sample article on how you could combine LibreOffice and Unoconv using a PHP wrapper. There maybe some accuracy issues if you add complex tables and images, but is worth testing on your files to see if it suits your needs.
If you need commercial software that renders as accurately as the native Microsoft Office tooling you could consider using the Zamzar API. With a dedicated support team, code examples in many of the major languages including PHP, simple low cost conversion credits and support for direct import and export to S3, it may cover most of the use cases you require. Feel free to reach out to our support team with any questions or dip into the getting started guide in our docs.
Resources:
- Use a PHP wrapper to convert from DOCX to PDF using Unoconv and LibreOffice
- PHPWord a PHP library used to manipulate Microsoft Word Documents
Related StackOverflow Questions:
Using HTML with PHP
There are a number of open source tools for creation of HTML files from a variety of different source file formats. Often the rendering of the outputted HTML file can be very heavyweight or difficult to edit, so it is worth reviewing the various different programs on offer to see which suits your needs. If you have a fairly simple source format such as a Microsoft Word document that is not too complex then you could consider using a tool such as Unoconv which converts between formats that OpenOffice supports and can output to HTML, the results however can be a little mixed if you have more complex documents.
Another option is to use another open source tool - Poppler. A number of developers have created PHP libraries that utilise Poppler for converting from PDF into HTML, so one option would be to convert the file into PDF then use a Poppler PHP library to convert that resulting PDF file into HTML - see PDF to HTML PHP Library using Poppler. Poppler is known to have some rendering issues, so it is certainly worth testing on a wide variety of files before deciding on this as a solution.
If you need a commercial solution with the benefit of the support that comes with that you could consider the Zamzar API. With a dedicated team on hand to help, code examples in many of the major languages including PHP, simple low cost conversion credits and support for direct import and export to S3, it may cover most of the use cases you require. Feel free to reach out to our support team with any questions or dip into the getting started guide in our docs. You can see a full list of supported input formats here.