rtf-html-php

An RTF to HTML converter in PHP

In a recent project, I desperately needed an RTF to HTML converter written in PHP. Googling around turned up some matches, but I could not get them to work properly. Also, one of them called passthru() to use a RTF2HTML executable, which is something I didn’t want. I was looking for an RTF to HTML converter written purely in PHP.

Since I couldn’t find anything ready-made, I sat down and coded one up myself. It’s short, and it works, implementing the subset of RTF tags that you’ll need in HTML and ignoring the rest. As it turns out, the RTF format isn’t that complicated when you really look at it, but it isn’t something you code a parser for in 15 minutes either.

How to use it

Install this package using composer. Then do this:

use RtfHtmlPhp\Document;

$rtf = file_get_contents("test.rtf"); 
$document = new Document($rtf); // or use a string directly

Document will raise an exception if the RTF document could not be parsed. Parse errors will generate PHP notices.

If you’d like to see what the parser read (for debug purposes), then call this:

echo $document;

To convert the parser’s parse tree to HTML, call this (but only if the RTF was successfully parsed):

use RtfHtmlPhp\Html\HtmlFormatter;
$formatter = new HtmlFormatter();
echo $formatter->Format($document);

For enhanced compatibility the default character encoding of the converted RTF unicode characters is set to HTML-ENTITIES. To change the default encoding, you can initialize the Html object with the desired encoding supported by mb_list_encodings(): ex. UTF-8

$formatter = new HtmlFormatter('UTF-8');

Install via Composer

composer require henck/rtf-to-html

Caveats

• Please note that rtf-html-php requires your PHP installation to support the mb_convert_encoding function. Therefore you must have the php-mbstring module installed. For fresh PHP installations, it will usually be there.