How can I view/open a word document in my browser using with PHP or HTML

Question

How can I open and view a .doc file extension in my browser? The file is located on my server.

Answer 1

Two options: First is to just link to it, e.g. <a href="MyWordDocument.doc">My Word Document</a>, the second is to use an iframe and point it to the document. For this to work, however, most browsers require that the server sends a Content-disposition: inline header with the document. If you cannot configure your web server to do this, you can wrap the document in a bit of php:

<?php
header('Content-disposition: inline');
header('Content-type: application/msword'); // not sure if this is the correct MIME type
readfile('MyWordDocument.doc');
exit;

And then link to that script instead of your word document.

This isn't guaranteed to work though; the content-disposition header is just a hint, and any browser may choose to treat it as an attachment anyway.

Also, note that .doc isn't exactly portable; basically, you need Word to display it properly (Open Office and a few other Open Source applications do kind of a decent job, but they're not quite there yet), and the browser must support opening Word as a plugin.

If the .doc file format requirement isn't set in stone, PDF would be a better choice (the conversion is usually as simple as printing it on a PDF printer, say, CutePDF, from inside Word), or maybe you can even convert the document to HTML (mileage may vary though).

Answer 2

<a href="foo.doc">…</a>

You will need a browser with a plugin for Office documents installed. I believe Microsoft Office will install one for at least Internet Explorer by default.

If you want to work without a plugin, then you will need to convert the document to another format — HTML for maximum compatibility. This isn't a trivial operation, especially for complex documents (or even those which just contain images).

Answer 3

$file = "$file_name.doc";
$len = filesize($file); // Calculate File Size
ob_clean();
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: public"); 
header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
header("Content-Type:application/zip"); // Send type of file
$header="Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$patient_name.zip;"; // Send File Name
header($header );
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: ".$len); // Send File Size
@readfile($file);

Answer 4

You can use google docs instead as it is free and reliable You can assign your file path to iframe.

e.g. iframe1.Attributes.Add("Src", "http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://YOUR_FILE_PATH&embedded=true");