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New to PHP, project advice

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:42 pm
by ADTRAN
Hi!

My supervisor suggested PHP for a project, though he isn't requiring it's use (anything that works is fine). I was just wondering if it was the best option.

The basics of the project are:
  • There is information in an excel spreadsheet.
  • This information is to be taken from Excel into a Word document (similar to a mail merge, for those familiar)
  • This document is to be published to a .pdf file and attached to an an email (an email with a pre formatted template with other attachments) to accounts determined by data from the excel spreadsheet.
I am pretty much completely new to PHP, so is PHP the way to go for this?

If so, any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks for replies

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:49 pm
by Oren
Try to search the forums for "excel" and "ms word".

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:02 pm
by RobertGonzalez
You could do what you want with PHP. It will be quite a project, working all the interfaces up and what not. You will first need a script to read the Excel file AND the wordfile, then you will need the merge the pertinent information from the one to the other. Then you will need to take the merged document and write a script to translate that to PDF, then figure out how to send that PDF to your users through email.

Yeah, it can be done, but, like I said, this is one heckuva project.

Re: New to PHP, project advice

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:17 pm
by Christopher
ADTRAN wrote:I am pretty much completely new to PHP, so is PHP the way to go for this?
The main thing you need to know about PHP is that it is specifically for creating web applications -- which generally means delivered by a web server and view in a browser. If that is what you want to do then PHP is on of the best choices and can deal with the file formats and emailing requirements that you mention.

On the other hand, if you do not want to create a web application, then other general purpose languages such as C/C++, Java or Python would probably be better suited for building your applicaton.