Generate documents thumbnails (PDF, Word, Spreadsheets, etc.) from within PHP

Question

Hello guys,

I was wondering if there is there is a way to create thumbnails for different types of documents, for instance PDF documents, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, etc, not only for the images, from within PHP?

If this would be to hard to accomplish, I would also be interested in a way to achieve something similar only for PDF documents instead.

Thank you in advance, Constantin TOVISI

Answer 1

You don't mention your platform, but as you refer to Word docs, I'll apply a bit of an assumption that this will be on a Windows server.

If so, the IExtractImage COM interface might be of use, although PHP's COM integration is "less than brilliant", so you might find that some of the helpers do not support IDispatch as well (so PHP would struggle to see it).

The other option would be to write a custom CGI/ISAPI interface/PHP extension (if you're really brave) to do the job for you, which could give better performance as well as removing the dependency on IDispatch.

Answer 2

This may help.