The Format Filtering Server (FFS) provides file format conversion services via HTTP interface. A document is received via HTTP-POST and the converted document is sent back as HTTP reply.

The messaging server ActiveMQ is used as a platform to achieve horizontal scalability. Many conversion nodes can be connected to the system and "consume" conversion-jobs from the respective queues. Scalability can be achieved on the HTTP side by connecting multiple HTTP-components to the messaging server.

The current status of implementation employs LibreOffice for converting input to the ODT format. Valid input formats are:

• plain/text,
• MS-OOXML-Documents (.docx),
• MS-Binary-Word-Documents (.doc)

The code in this repository is AGPL-3.0 licensed

The flow of format filtering components is as follows:

http_post -> conversion -> http_reply -> cleanup

http_post

* receives incoming http requests
* creates dedicated workspace (tmpdir)
* writes input document to filesystem

Conversion

• calls LibreOffice headlessly and executes actual conversion
• input/output files are read/written from workspace directory
• implements timeout handling

http_reply

* sends output document as HTTP reply
* runs in same worker/process as http_post (different queues)

Cleanup
~~~~~~~
* cleans workspace
* (disabled in current code, for development)

Configuration

• specifiy path to LibreOffice binary in config.js CONFIG.libreoffice_binary

Startup

* $cd format-filter-server
* $./start-broker.sh
* $cd code
* $node run.js httpd
* $node run.js conversion

Testing
-------

Command line snippets

curl --data-binary @/tmp/your_example.docx http://127.0.0.1:16080/ > /tmp/your_example.odt curl --data "Hello World!" http://127.0.0.1:16080/ > /tmp/your_example.odt