Is there a way to search inside .doc files?

Question

I have around 50,000 *.doc files stored on my server(IIS). Now I want to build a search application in php that takes input keywords from user and search content of those files for those keywords. How to do this?

I been googling around for two three days, found few solutions as in phpword but that is for .docx file only. catdoc is not supported in windows. So is it possible to search content of the .doc file? And if yes, is it possible to perform a search with boolean operators(and or not etc.). php file handling functions were of no use either.

If not in PHP any other solution in any programming language will do. I'm in a desperate need to implement this and need a solution. Thank you :)

You could probably convert the .doc's to .docx. Heres a blog post on how to batch process them all. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2008/09/19/bulk-convert-doc-to-docx.aspx — Overachiever, Nov 06 '14 at 15:36
@Overachiever This was my first thought when reading this too +1 — Danieloplata, Nov 06 '14 at 15:40

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 06 '14 at 15:34

0

You can use a linux command grep and fetch the output with php - the function you are looking for is exec()

exec('grep search_term *.doc')

answered Nov 06 '14 at 15:34

mariobgr

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So is grep double-byte charset aware? – Mark Baker Nov 06 '14 at 15:38
I don't think it will work for Windows... unfortunately, I haven't used windows for a while so I don't know the cmd commands – mariobgr Nov 06 '14 at 15:57

Is there a way to search inside .doc files?

1 Answers1