Accessing a document's properties/metadata

**Petr Vileta** · Sep 6 '06, 05:15 AM

Re: Accessing a document's properties/metadata

<jreljac@gmail. comwrote in
news:1157503739 .848941.301680@ d34g2000cwd.goo glegroups.com.. .

Howdy,
>
Is it possible (and if it is how?) to have php display the details of a
word/excel/pdf document's properties/metadata?
>
I can go into MS Word...File...P roperties and assign things like Title,
Subject, Author, Comments, etc... What I need to do now is put thse
files on a server and have php display some of those properties for me.
>
(Is that the same as metadata?)
>
Is that possible and if it is how do I go about getting started?
>

This infos are near the end of DOC file. Open DOC file in some hexa-editor
and look at the end of file. You can see something like this

W o r d D o c u m e n t
???? .$ S u m m a r y I n f o
r m a t i o n (
) D o c u m e n t S u m m a r y I n f o r m a t i
o n 8 ????????

All texts are in unicode (UTF-16). You can open this file via PHP in binary
mode and extract what you want :-)

--

Petr Vileta, Czech republic
(My server rejects all messages from Yahoo and Hotmail. Send me your mail
from another non-spammer site please.)

**Steve** · Sep 6 '06, 08:35 AM

Re: Accessing a document's properties/metadata

Is it possible (and if it is how?) to have php display the details of a
word/excel/pdf document's properties/metadata?

You can do this via PHPs COM support, but only if you are hosted on
Windows with MS Office installed.

// for MSExcel use:
$objOfficeApp = new COM("excel.appl ication") or die("unable to
instantiate MSExcel");
// for MSWord use:
//$objOfficeApp = new COM("word.appli cation") or die("unable to
instantiate MSWord");

$objOfficeApp->Workbooks->Open( "c:\\temp\\test .xls" );
//$objOfficeApp->Documents->Open( "c:\\temp\\test .doc" );

$objDocProps =
$objOfficeApp->ActiveWorkBo ok->BuiltInDocumen tProperties();
//$objDocProps =
$objOfficeApp->ActiveDocume nt->BuiltInDocumen tProperties();

$count = $objDocProps->count();

while( $objDocProp = $objDocProps->Next() )
{
if( $objDocProp->Name() == 'Title' )
{
print 'Title: ' . $objDocProp->Value() . "\n";
break;
}
}

// *** IMPORTANT: release all resources correctly to avoid memory
leaks...

unset($objDocPr op);
unset($objDocPr ops);

$objOfficeApp->ActiveWorkBo ok->Close();
//$objOfficeApp->ActiveDocume nt->Close();
$objOfficeApp->Quit();
unset($objOffic eApp);

---
Steve

**Chung Leong** · Sep 6 '06, 03:05 PM

Re: Accessing a document's properties/metadata

jreljac@gmail.c om wrote:

Howdy,
>
Is it possible (and if it is how?) to have php display the details of a
word/excel/pdf document's properties/metadata?
>
I can go into MS Word...File...P roperties and assign things like Title,
Subject, Author, Comments, etc... What I need to do now is put thse
files on a server and have php display some of those properties for me.
>
(Is that the same as metadata?)
>
Is that possible and if it is how do I go about getting started?
>
TIA,
J-

Indexing Service is a good way to do this. See:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.php/browse_frm/thread/ac3bc41b84a0a427/21770bae0271ad11

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.php/browse_frm/thread/3ecf213313a0faa2/ca4edd50c1a40666