Question

word to html: document conversion using ruby on rails

Asked by: gt9

Hi,

I am trying to convert MS word files into an HTML format. I have used Abiword and OpenOffice (PyDocConverter) for the document conversion. I am able to convert document using both tools. I need some help regarding storage, rendering, and caching.
1. Where should I store the converted page? Right now, I am using /tmp directory of my system. Will it be good idea to store it in the application's public directory?
2. I would like to open HTML document in a new browser tab or window. Right now I am using ActionController API - send_file and render methods to serve this HTML file. However, they do not seem to offer 'open in new tab' option. Is there any option I can serve this in a new tab? My related question : http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Editors_IDEs/RubyOnRails/Q_23826992.html?cid=239
3. Assuming that many users will try to access this document, how can I use caching?

I am attaching my code snippet over here. Please suggest me any other issues to consider and/or improvements in this code.

~
GT

def view_html
    @attachment = Attachment.find(params[:id])     
    @filename = @attachment.filename 
    @data = @attachment.data
    ctype = @attachment.content_type
    
      if ctype == 'application/msword'
        File.open(File.join("/", "tmp", "#{@filename}"), "wb") do |file|  
          file.write(@attachment.data)
        end
        #InvokePyDoc launches OpenOffice in background, uses PyDocConverter, kills OpenOffice process 
        `InvokePyDoc.sh /tmp/#{@filename} /tmp/#{@filename}.html;`
        render :file => "/tmp/#{@filename}.html", :layout => false
        # send_file '/tmp/test.html', :type => 'text/html; charset=utf-8', :disposition => 'inline'
      end
    
  end

                                  
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:

Select allOpen in new window

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2008-10-19 at 19:22:15ID23828477
Tags

ruby on rails

Topics

RubyOnRails

,

Ruby Scripting Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
4

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Configuring Apache For Ruby On Rails
    I have an installation of LAMP through XAMPP; i.e. I have PHP, MySql, Apache configured. I also downloaded Ruby and installed Rails through Ruby Gems command line. What do I do next? How do I create a Rails app and how to configure Apache to render the same?
  2. Implementing Blogger API using Ruby on Rails
    I am a beginner at RoR on Mac. I am trying to figure out how to use the Action Web Service to create a web app that allows any user to cross post from my site to their blog on Blogger. I've been reading the Blogger API - and I'd like for someone to explain how I could use th...
  3. How to create restart.txt for restart ruby_rails?
    How to create restart.txt for restart ruby_rails? And to run touch #{current_path}/tmp/restart.txt to restart?
  4. ruby on rails installation disappears after computer restart
    ruby -v bash: ruby: command not found rails -v bash: rails: command not found gem bash: gem" command not found do I have to reinstall ruby on rails on windows os every time I restart computer I dont think there is any evidence that ruby on rails was ever on my comput...
  5. Ruby on rails Can't find Gem
    I have a ubuntu hardy server with REE 1.8.7 and rubygems 1.3.5. I think there is a version problem but I can't find it. When I require the gem SystemTimer in my rails application i get an error from mod_rails saying "Missing these required gems: SystemTimer You're runn...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: WikkardPosted on 2008-10-19 at 20:44:27ID: 22755014

I'm not totally familiar with ruby scripting and the like however I have used the following method to convert word documents to html in the past. I assume that this is a web app of some sort ?

MS Word versions after office 2003 can be saved in an xml format, this allows you to manipulate the underlying xml to create whatever you need.

My approach to this would be as follows (I have actually done this but not using ruby):
1. Get the documents as XML
2. Apply a wordml to html transform on the xml document. Which you can get here -> http://www.tkachenko.com/dotnet/files/Word2HTML-1.0.zip
3. Store the result in a folder somewhere (this provided the caching mechanism your asked about).

Not sure if this is the sort of solution you're after but I think its definitely the way to go as you dont need to worry about creating instances of office or any other conversion utilities on a server (web?).

 

by: gt9Posted on 2008-10-19 at 21:28:41ID: 22755135

Thank you for sharing this solution.
In future, I am planning to work on excel and ppt files as well. Currently I am using PyODConverter for document conversion. http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/pyodconverter
(Sorry for the typo PyDocConverter in the original post)
PyODConverter seems to best of the lot as it offers many input-output format options.

~
GT



 

by: doadesPosted on 2008-10-20 at 00:25:19ID: 22755618

One way to open the pages in a new windows is

<%= link_to "open", :controller => 'controller', :action => 'view_html', :popup => true %>

or you can use a standard html <a href

<a href="/controller/view_html" onclick="window.open(this.href,'_blank','height=400,width=400');return false;"><img alt="Open" border="0" />Open HTML</a>

from a personal view I would store them under the public folder, then maybe converts, this would make the fetch files easier, with the above links.

 

by: gethemantPosted on 2008-12-18 at 23:30:24ID: 23210687

For your case:

1. Storing in /tmp folder may not be a good idea, because stuff inside /tmp are cleared out periodically by operating system. Hence please using something like:

  RAILS_ROOT/user_docs/

2. Opening a new window question is already answered by doades

3. For caching. Can you not just check if for the given attachment, if corresponding file has been already created? If file exists use that or else go ahead and regenerate the page. However, for finer control, I will advise you to look into fragment caching.



20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...