A modern, high-performance PHP library for reading Microsoft Compound Binary File Format (CFBF/OLE) documents.
The compound file format goes by several names: "Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Compound File (CF)", "Compound Binary File", "Compound Document File", and "OLE2." This format creates a filesystem within a file and is used by .doc, .xls, .ppt, and other Microsoft Office files.
This library was designed to address the lack of quality options for parsing compound file binary format natively in PHP. Existing implementations were either slow or made assumptions that didn't conform to the specification. This library prioritizes speed and standards compliance, ensuring broad compatibility and excellent performance at scale.
- Full CFBF Spec Compliance: Properly handles FAT, DIFAT, and mini-FAT chain structures
- Stream Wrapper: PHP stream wrapper for seamless resource-based access
- Big-Endian Support: Correctly parses both little-endian (standard) and big-endian compound files
- 64-bit File Support: Handles large files with 64-bit ulSize fields in version 4+ files
- UTF-16 Encoding: Properly converts UTF-16LE/BE stream names to UTF-8
- PHP 7.4+ Compatible: Works with PHP 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3+
- PSR-4 Autoloading: Composer-based installation and autoloading
- Fully Tested: Comprehensive PHPUnit test suite with unit and integration tests
Install via Composer:
composer require danrossiter/binary-compound-fileTo use the library, there are two options depending on your specific needs: a stream wrapper or raw access to the parsed file fields. Below, both of these approaches are demonstrated. The stream option provides a nice abstraction if you have functions that accept a PHP resource that you want to pass in a single stream from a compound file.
use DanRossiter\BinaryCompoundFile\CompoundFile;
use DanRossiter\BinaryCompoundFile\StorageType;
// Open the compound file
$handle = fopen('document.doc', 'rb');
$cfb = new CompoundFile($handle);
// Extract a specific stream
$wordDocStream = $cfb->getDirectory('WordDocument');
$content = $cfb->getStream($wordDocStream);
// Iterate through all streams
$directories = $cfb->getDirectories();
foreach ($directories as $name => $dir) {
if ($dir->getMse() === StorageType::STREAM) {
$streamContent = $cfb->getStream($dir);
echo "Stream: $name, Size: " . strlen($streamContent) . " bytes\n";
}
}
fclose($handle);For seamless integration with PHP's stream functions:
use DanRossiter\BinaryCompoundFile\CompoundFileStream;
// Register the stream wrapper
stream_wrapper_register('cfbf', CompoundFileStream::class);
// Access streams using the cfbf:// protocol
$handle = fopen('cfbf://document.doc#WordDocument', 'rb');
$content = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);See the examples/ directory for complete working examples:
extract-all-streams.php- Extract all streams to individual filesstream-wrapper.php- Using the cfbf:// stream wrapperinspect-structure.php- Analyze file structure and directory treecreate-bigendian-test.php- Generate big-endian test files
- PHP 7.4 or higher
- No external dependencies (pure PHP implementation)
composer test# Static analysis
composer phpstan
# Code style checking
composer cs-check
# Code style fixing
composer cs-fixContributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
If you discover a security vulnerability, please see SECURITY.md for reporting procedures.
- Write support (currently read-only)
- Additional format validation and corruption detection
- Convenience classes:
WordFile,ExcelFile,PowerPointFilewith format-specific methods
GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.txt for details.
Created by Dan Rossiter