The com class

(PHP 4 >= 4.1.0, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

Introduction

The com class allows you to instantiate an OLE compatible COM object and call its methods and access its properties.

Class synopsis

class com extends variant {
/* Methods */
public __construct(
    string $module_name,
    array|string|null $server_name = null,
    int $codepage = CP_ACP,
    string $typelib = ""
)
}

Overloaded Methods

The returned object is an overloaded object, which means that PHP does not see any fixed methods as it does with regular classes; instead, any property or method accesses are passed through to COM.

PHP will automatically detect methods that accept parameters by reference, and will automatically convert regular PHP variables to a form that can be passed by reference. This means that you can call the method very naturally; you needn't go to any extra effort in your code.

com examples

Example #1 com example (1)

<?php
// starting word
$word = new com("word.application") or die("Unable to instantiate Word");
echo "Loaded Word, version {$word->Version}\n";

//bring it to front
$word->Visible = 1;

//open an empty document
$word->Documents->Add();

//do some weird stuff
$word->Selection->TypeText("This is a test...");
$word->Documents[1]->SaveAs("Useless test.doc");

//closing word
$word->Quit();

//free the object
$word = null;
?>

Example #2 com example (2)

<?php

$conn = new com("ADODB.Connection") or die("Cannot start ADO");
$conn->Open("Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source=localhost;
Initial Catalog=database; User ID=user; Password=password");

$rs = $conn->Execute("SELECT * FROM sometable");    // Recordset

$num_columns = $rs->Fields->Count();
echo $num_columns . "\n";

for ($i=0; $i < $num_columns; $i++) {
    $fld[$i] = $rs->Fields($i);
}

$rowcount = 0;
while (!$rs->EOF) {
    for ($i=0; $i < $num_columns; $i++) {
        echo $fld[$i]->value . "\t";
    }
    echo "\n";
    $rowcount++;            // increments rowcount
    $rs->MoveNext();
}

$rs->Close();
$conn->Close();

$rs = null;
$conn = null;

?>

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