title: Database of docs and their full paths - How to get the full filepath? (PHP)
body: <p>This is my first question, so I hope to get this right.. I have been developing a web app in PHP/Jquery/Html for internal company use ONLY - It is simple internal intranet page that allows company employees to see help docs and forms that are normally spread throughout various locations on our work network, all in one place. - I'm using com object to read them (word docs) and then show them as html after a local copy is made, or just read them out the local cache if already there (provided the modified date of the original is still the same). </p>
  
  <p>Now, right towards the end of this project, I've hit a snag, one which after some Googling and reading I can not find a way around. I wanted a select few admins to be able to add links to new documents, allowing the system to grow, and for this I thought I'd be able to let them select a doc, and get the full path (including server name or IP) to then store in the DB along with its name and other details, ready to be loaded upon request - However i'm struggling with this, as I'm now aware this is a security issue (in a WWW environment at least) and so not supported.</p>
  
  <p>This is a windows network, and the docs are all unsecured as they are simply help files we (and the different department managers) have made for the users in our company.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know of a way I can get this path in PHP, or maybe another language I haven't thought of that would be compatible with what Ive made so far?</p>
  
  <p>Example path would be something like </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>\\server\share\path\to\file.doc</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Many thanks.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT..</p>
  
  <p>Hey guys, I'm coming back to this to add more detail, in the hope that anyone, can help// can this be achieved in javascript/jquery/flash or any other web language I can integrate with my site?</p>
  
  <p>I'll give more info on what i'm trying to achieve..</p>
  
  <p>I have made a company internal internet that will have no external access. Users login with their domain credentials, and are authenticated using LDAP. The site is used to organise and display all the many .doc's and .docx's (helpfiles, forms and other documents) we have scattered around our work network. I'm using COM to load the file from a network share and display it. The first time a file is loaded, it makes a local copy of it on the server - after this is loads form the local copy, unless it detects the modified date of the original file has changed, in which case it will re-download and translate the file using COM (original modified date is stored in DB first time it is accessed, and also after subsequent updates). For this reason the system MUST know full path names to the original files. Everything is working great, except my only way of storing a full path to a file currently is having one of the admin users (that have rights to add and remove file links) type the full path, which I feel is not very user friendly! The files themselves are stored on different servers, and on different shares, and of course different folders, and the margin for user error is high!</p>
  
  <p>Is there anyway, using any language I can create a 'user selection' style pop up, so the user can traverse the local file system, select a share or mapped drive, and then navigate to the file, and for me to then be able to save this full path info. I do not need to upload the file, just save this path!</p>
  
  <p>I'm pretty much at the end of my road on this one as it seems security restrictions in browsers and languages seem to disallow this. Please help.. my app is 99% complete, and if i can get this working in a user friendly way (changing options in php/server (IIS), or even browser while a user is on my site.. flash.. even asp.net (which i currently don't know much of but will learn if i need to for this!</p>
  
  <p>Thanks again!</p>