Is it possible to build a web-office application with JavaScript and OpenOffice?

Question

I want to write a web site which can edit OpenOffice document ODF, user can upload ODF file to website, edit them, and download them as ODF again.

How can I do this? And how does docs.google.com do it?

Now I want to try OpenOffice (LibreOffice) UNO programing at server and JavaScript on website, is it possible? If it is possible, how can I do it?

Answer 1

In general. Yes you can.

Open office is 'open', thus you can by browsing it's code you can learn how ODF's are created and kept. But you should find specification of all open office documents, it's out there, and it's a reason why all open offices documents have been granted ISO standard a while ago.

I think there should be a plenty of already scripts that are converting doc to odf, pdf to odf, backwards and etc, try googling for your favorite php/python/ruby/java/other script that provides such solution. Maybe there is even a solution that is changing PHP's object into doc/odf/pdf format and let to convert one format into another.

Editing it in a browser that is much harder and requires a lot more work. But google docs shows it possible.

In few words, a lot of work, and some work already done by community. Need to a google bit to find that pieces.