Question

I’m currently working with cakephp and I am generating a word document. My problem is how can I put the generated document on my web root and not as a download.

Answer 1

I am guessing you are using an action to generate a document, which gets output to the browser.

You should either use output buffering to “catch” the output and then write it to a file, or write the document data to a string, and write that string to a file on the server.

EDIT:
PHPWord has a SAVE method. In your action, you can save the document to a certain location, but output something else, i.e. success notification. This way, your action only generates the file:

public function generateWordDocument(){
//... your word file creation...
    $wordDocumentLocation = TMP . 'word_files/';
    $objWriter = PHPWord_IOFactory::createWriter($PHPWord, 'Word2007');
    $objWriter->save($wordDocumentLocation . 'helloWorld.docx');
    $this->Session->setFlash('Document generated!');
    $this->redirect(array('action'=>'index')); //or wherever you want
}

If you want to protect that file, you could save the file to a “secure” folder (this can either be a folder outside the “app/webroot” folder, or a folder protected with .htaccess deny all instruction) and than use another action, like “getWordDocument”:

function getWordDocument($documentName){
    $wordDocumentLocation = TMP . 'word_files/';
    if (file_exists($wordDocumentLocation . $documentName)) { //this is not really the safest way of doing it
         $fp = fopen($wordDocumentLocation . $documentName, 'rb');
         header("Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document");
         header("Content-Length: " . filesize($wordDocumentLocation . $documentName));
         fpassthru($fp);
         exit();
    }
}

Please note, that this code is just for “grasping the concept” and is in no way safe or optimal.