How do I integrate MS Word into a web page?

I have a section of a web application I’m working on where there are mail merge templates. The documents are word documents. When a user has need to edit the template I’d like them to be able to simply click edit, which would cause word to load with the document loaded. When the user is done, they click save in word and the web page spots the change in the file and pushes this back to the server.

I managed to create a VBScript in a web page that could do all of this, but only when internet explorers security was turned down. The fact that I’m using VBScript to automate is not good as it restricts the browser choice and I’m not happy asking my users to turn their security down开发者_运维知识库.

I don’t want the users to download the file, edit it, save it to their local machine and then upload it back to the server, it’s all very clunky. I also know that there are 3rd party controls that allow editing in a page, but I'd rather avoid them if I can.

Is there an alternative way of approaching this?

You can use Office Open XML to generate the word documents on the Server Side. There is an msdn article, sorry no time to go searching for it, explaining why you should not automate office from web servers using COM/DCOM because of security issues involving shared memory.

you could use google docs API, which is certainly more universal than using proprietary technology that works in one and only browser (IE).

I think you can go for the google docs API. It is more generic solution to go for too.

It is possible, with browser-security caveats, to open Word documents for edit from a browser via an UNC path on an internal network.

The best option currently is to WebDAV enable your website, and use the SharePoint plug-in client-side to open the file in Word over WebDAV.

The SharePoint plug-in for IE gets installed when you install Office. There is also a plug-in for Firefox/ Chrome referred to as NPAPI. Beware NPAPI seems to have an issue with long URL paths.

IT Hit make a terrific framework for WebDAV enabling a .NET-based website, see http://www.webdavsystem.com/. They also sell a client-side library that can open Word documents via Java instead of the plug-ins mentioned above. IIS has it own, more basic, WebDAV capability that you can use too.

I am not familiar with non-.Net / Apache solutions but just search for WebDAV products.

Office will require the use of HTTPS for editing via WebDAV.