How to convert ppt slide to jpeg images in php

Question

I saw some similar questions on this forum but all those were for .NET platform so please don't close it as duplicate. I have a linux system and I want to convert slide to images via php or shell script(less preferable). the convert command can convert pdf to jpg's but not a ppt.

Any help would be great.

You can try scripting OpenOffice Impress, as it can read (some) PPTs and render them, but getting results similar to what Powerpoint itself will produce is going to be hit/miss. — Marc B, Jan 04 '12 at 18:43
Please clarify: *.ppt (maybe doable) or *.pptx (close to impossible) — Eugen Rieck, Jan 04 '12 at 18:46

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 24 '19 at 12:20

I was able to accomplish this by first converting the powerpoint file to pdf. This required me installing libre office on my server. Then converting the pdf to images is easily done using image magic. Here is some of my code. It uses https://github.com/ncjoes/office-converter (for the ppt to pdf conversion) and https://github.com/spatie/pdf-to-image (for the pdf to image conversion)

  //now convert file to pdf
            $converter = new OfficeConverter($newFile);
            $result = $converter->convertTo('output.pdf');

            $pdfFile = BASE_PATH.'/output.pdf';
            //now convert pdf file to images
            chdir(BASE_PATH); 

            //get total number of pages in pdf file
            $pdf = new \Spatie\PdfToImage\Pdf($pdfFile);
            $pdf->setCompressionQuality(80);
            $pages = $pdf->getNumberOfPages();

            for($i=1;$i<=$pages;$i++){
                $pdf->setPage($i)->saveImage(BASE_PATH."/image$i.jpg");

            }

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '12 at 18:58

2

http://code.google.com/p/jodconverter/ seems to have all the building blocks in place, there is even a sample webapp.

We used the old version at http://sourceforge.net/projects/jodconverter/ successfully some time ago, but thI really can't remember the details.

answered Jan 04 '12 at 18:58

Eugen Rieck

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You said pptx impossible? what does this project do? – prongs Jan 05 '12 at 11:43
It uses [Open|Libre]Office, which is not really able of reliably loading .pptx files – Eugen Rieck Jan 05 '12 at 11:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 03 '17 at 23:29

From a shell script you could use Unoconv which is a simple command line wrapper to LibreOffice which would enable you to convert to a reasonable quality.

For a solution with higher quality output that can be called directly from PHP (and on Linux) you could use a dedicated file conversion API such as Zamzar.

The code to submit a PPT (or PPTX) file for conversion into JPEG would be as follows (more info in the documentation):

<?php
// Build request
$endpoint = "https://api.zamzar.com/v1/jobs";
$apiKey = "YOUR_KEY";
$sourceFilePath = "/tmp/my.ppt"; // Or PPTX
$targetFormat = "jpg";

$sourceFile = curl_file_create($sourceFilePath);    
$postData = array(
  "source_file" => $sourceFile,
  "target_format" => $targetFormat
);

// Send request
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $endpoint);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postData);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SAFE_UPLOAD, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $apiKey . ":");
$body = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Process response (with link to converted files)
$response = json_decode($body, true);
print_r($response);
?>

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 04 '12 at 18:42

I don't think thats possible. Using .NET would means that the user is creating an instance of a powerpoint application and asking it to print a specific slide to a JPG or PDF but in the case of PHP i don't think it could be possible from a linux system.

In the event you can go on windows server, then you could use the COM interface of PHP to create a COM application and start an installed PowerPoint application and do the same thing as long as the COM component is exposing the necessary methods (probably PRINT())

Good luck

hmmm. I guess then I need to ask users of my site to upload a pre-converted pdf. — prongs, Jan 05 '12 at 11:42

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 18 '16 at 02:51

hi you need to enable COM in php.ini then you can try this out

<?php

$ppApp = new COM("PowerPoint.Application");
$ppApp->Visible = True;
$strPath = realpath(basename(getenv($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"]))); // C:/AppServ/www/myphp
$ppName = "MySlides.ppt";
$FileName = "MyPP";
//*** Open Document ***//
$ppApp->Presentations->Open(realpath($ppName));
//*** Save Document ***//
$ppApp->ActivePresentation->SaveAs($strPath."/".$FileName,17);  //'*** 18=PNG, 19=BMP **'
//$ppApp->ActivePresentation->SaveAs(realpath($FileName),17);
$ppApp->Quit;
$ppApp = null;

?>

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 29 '20 at 19:49

A .pptx file is just a zipped file. So all you need to do to get the .jpeg files is to unzip the file and then use the .jpeg files:

Then the folder with the image files is in \ppt\media\ folder.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/ziparchive.extractto.php gives php code to extract the zipped file.

How to convert ppt slide to jpeg images in php

6 Answers6