Sharepoint like functionality to connect to office apps

Question

Is there a way to connect to office applications like Sharepoint does in a custom PHP web app?

Answer 1

Although it might not be possible to support every Sharepoint feature, I think it should be possible to support the basics. Even the basics will take a bit of work though, and involve working with a PHP WebDAV library, IE-only ActiveX controls, and perhaps modifying the user's registry.

This site has some information on how you need to set-up WebDAV so that Office applications can open a file over WebDAV in read/write mode. Also read up on the OpenDocuments Control, and the Registry key it uses.

Using this information you can probably make a Office-compatible WebDAV server using a PHP WebDAV library like SabreDAV. The SabreDAV website mentions Open Office compatibility but not Office compatibility so you might have some patching to do.