Problems generating word documents on server side for security reasons

Posted on 16th Feb 2014 07:03 pm by admin

I have a problem with word documentation generation when generating a word document (docx) with PHP. I am doing this for security reasons, as I do not want people to be able to directly access a file with urls, so I store the files above the web root and they are generated on the server side on demand. Here is my code for manually testing file generation of a .docx file ( a Word 2007 file ):

$path = "../../uploads_productionization/file_for_category_1_tab_2/adsfdafds.docx

// We'll be outputting a docx
header( 'Content-type: application/vnd.openxmlformats & -officedocument.wordprocessingml.document.main+xml');

// It will be called downloaded.docx
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloaded.docx"');

// The word source is in adsfdafds.docx
readfile($path);


When I execute this code, ie when I manually generate a docx file, I get two error messages:

"The Open Office XML document cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents"
Details: "File is corrupt and cannot be opened"

Next message:
"Word found unreadable content in downloaded.docx. Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If so, please click Yes"

When I click Yes on the second message, the document opens. Sometimes the file is okay, sometimes it isn't when there are pictures and formatting and so on and so forth.

Anyone have a solution for this problem? Been trying to get around this for at least a week...

P.S. All other files, PDFs, text files, work fine.. I think it's just office documents.

Your Answer:

Login to answer

Other forums

script and html conflict in trying to create a header.
I have an error is occurring because of an html webpage with a "php require" at the top of

Regular expression tips or resources
Hello! I'm having some issues implementing the appropriate regex patter to eliminate unwanted charac

do while...woes
I'm sure this is childsplay but it is stumping me, everytime i try what I think would make this work

need to apply an if/else statement to Tim Thumb script
Not sure how to work this. I essentially want to call a variety of image sizes based on which style

Reduce redundancies in switch functions?
Hello all! I somewhat new to PHP, and was wondering if anyone could give some suggestions on a swit

PHP and XML image gallery variable issue
I'm trying to display the large image on the same page as the thumbnails, to do that I'm passing a v

Lining up columns nicely.
Hello everyone, I'm having problems with making columns line up properly. Here is my code:

How to add functionality to a simple php calender?
Hello everyone,

I have just finished creating a simple php calander. Can someone point

Weird problem with SELECT command..Help!
Hi!

It seems I'm having a really weird problem with SQL SELECT command....I have table into a

What's best way to get a user's Word doc converted to simple html and images?
Hi all,

I was just wondering if anybody has any experience of this.
Basically, I'm buildin