Open remote document and save back to remote server

Question

I have programmed a web app for my office that runs on the server. All of our documents are on the server as well. I would like to be able to have the user browse a folder on the server through my web app, open it in an editor (online or desktop), be able to edit it and save it back to the server, in the location where it was opened from.

I've been looking into Google Docs, but that doesn't have the ability to embed the editor outside of the google docs site.

I have also been looking into MS Office web apps but that required a lot of prerequisites and it's pretty pricey ($370 per license, which mean I'd have to spend around $10k just to be able to have my employees open, edit and save docs through my web app).

Is there any possibility of opening a remote file in word and being able to click "save" and have it save it back to that remote location? Or is there any other solutions to this problem? I'm sure many have come across this issue and there are lots of ways to approach it.

Answer 1

WebDAV is well worth looking at; it has the advantage of integration into the Word File Open/Save dialogs. You can use the various versions of WebDAV built into Windows or which come with Office (note: these are not the same), or you can use a 3rd party provider if the deficiencies of the Microsoft implementations aren't tolerable for you.

You could also consider the Sharepoint Protocol, which is manifested in Word's document workspace feature. You don't necessarily need to run Sharepoint on the server; Alfresco for example has a "just enough" implementation of the protocol.

Finally, there is CMIS; but AFAIK there isn't a CMIS client for Office.

See similar Save and Open Remote Documents

Answer 2

You would need to have your server implement the WebDAV protocol. This is fairly well defined but does take a lot of work to get right.