PHP Document management

Question

I am looking for a mature PHP-based, preferably Open Source, Document management solution.

Requirements:

• Manage documents, preferably in a folder structure
• Clean architecture
• Half-way nice-looking interface (I can customize but need a clean basis)
• Can fulltext index PDF, OpenOffice and ideally MS Office formats
• Multi-user capable
• Must be a browser-based web app, no Java clients etc.
• Self-hosted solution

Nice to haves:

• An API to read / write documents would be great
• PHP5 based architecture
• Versioning (Storage of multiple versions of a document)
• Image thumbnails
• Tagging

I am aware of

• KnowledgeTree (about to do a test install)
• OpenDocMan (very interesting, about to do a test install)

and would appreciate any additional hints and links to related projects - also in the direction of Asset Management for advertising agencies and such. For a brilliant, totally outstanding killer application that does most things out of the box I would also be ready to go beyond PHP (but it has to be a web app).

I checked through the dupes but found no question going into the right direction.

Answer 1

Firstly let me state that this answer is an "alternative" solution to your requirements and maybe not be the exact answer your looking for but I think the software that im about to descibe may influence you to look at other languages / platforms.

The software is called Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 which the Free Product, Links are below.

Firstly ill let you know that actual files are stored as binary within the database, and are not physical files on the system.

I have been working with sharepoint for the past few weeks few weeks now and I find it amazing, the way the application is designed is extreamly complex but the branding is not that complex, especially if you know C#.

• Manage documents, preferably in a folder structure

  • The document management is extremely powerful especially with the Microsoft office range, Where documents such as Excel,Word,Access can be modified and worked on by multiple people within the browser.
  • You can point a folder on your desktop to your http server and the files would be stored exactly how you wish, Drag and drop within your computer.
  • The collaboration of this kit will bring a "group" of people together to increase work rate and decrease work load (if required).

• Interface:

  • Please take a loog at the following screen: http://www.misdivision.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Use-Access-to-Edit-lists-in-Sharepoint-Slide-02.png

• Multi-user capable

  • if you had the costs to have multiple servers, creating a separate server and installing Active Directory as your main login, or you could just select Web Based Login

• An API to read / write documents would be great

  • If you have ever used Visual Studio you would understand that learning how to do applications is pretty simple, Well Sharepoint have integrated into Visual Studio 2010 so that you can Create/Modify/Deploy web parts to your site, you can create everything from a Youtube scraper to a complex multi segmented database analyser.

What I would recommend you doing is researching the platform in more detail and watching video cast on Youtube and Microsoft.

With foundation you do not have to scale your Sharepoint out as a farm, you can have it all in the same box such as a Server with MSSQL, Office 2007 installed, IIS, And Sharepoint on top of that.

if you do not have the resources for this then you can always rent a Sharepoint Server pre deployed.

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Update 1.

Also i would like to mention that creating a network share on your PC and pointing the location to (http://pecka.com/archive) would result in being able to drag and drop files in the folder and them getting synchronizes with SharePoint, meta data automatically generated and stored in the DB.

Sorry for the rambe but i would at least look into it

• Links
  • Sharepoint 2010 Foundation Download
  • Sharepoint Companion (What im currently reading) + CD
  • Sharepoint Designer Video

Answer 2

you might have a look into drupal. First thing to clarify is if it should be only DMS and nothing else then it would vote for another special DMS tool.

I set it up as lightweight DMS solution (to be extended to general intranet CMS) in my workplace. The workflow is fine, pdf and odt full text search too, permissions was a bit tricky. It's drupal 6, meanwhile d7 is available. If you want more info, i'd be glad to elaborate.

btw asset-management for large video and audio recordings i am doing some private research too.

Answer 3

Check out DokuWiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

Mature and feature-rich.

Answer 4

You may have a look at these too - they are all LAMP based
owl
letodms
knowledgetree - looks like they have put their open source initiative on back burner. You can find the old release from this url.

Answer 5

I also progress to develop a LAMP-based document server and backend using some programming like Python and Java. For my suggestion you must find the document software eDocs DM server that develop in Windows Platform for guideline. The concept are same ways, but different platform and programming language.

Then try to compare features of open source, like:

• Alfresco;
• Liferay;
• Nuxeo;
• OpenDocMan;
• and others.

Checkout here for Open Source Document Management Systems: http://lerablog.org/technology/the-best-open-source-document-management-systems/