elephant-php

An elephant never forgets your document structure — convert .docx to semantic HTML and Markdown in pure PHP. Inspired by mammoth.js.

Attribution. This library is an independent PHP port inspired by mammoth.js by Michael Williamson. It adopts mammoth's core philosophy (extract semantics, not formatting) and style-mapping DSL. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the mammoth.js project.

Features

• Pure PHP, no LibreOffice / Pandoc / shell-out — only the standard dom, libxml, mbstring, xmlreader, zip extensions.
• HTML and Markdown output from the same intermediate model.
• Headings (h1–h6), paragraphs, runs with bold / italic / strike / superscript / subscript, hyperlinks, nested lists (mixed ul/ol), tables (colspan + rowspan from gridSpan and vMerge), images (embedded as data URIs by default, customisable handler), footnotes and endnotes (with backlinks), comments, content controls (w:sdt), symbol fonts (Wingdings / Webdings / Symbol via dingbat-to-unicode), legacy hyperlink complex fields (w:fldChar).
• Mammoth-compatible style-mapping DSL: p[style-name='Heading 1'] => h1:fresh, b => strong, r.Code => code, comment-reference => sup, highlight[color='yellow'] => mark, br[type='page'] => hr, table.Grid => table.fancy, => ! for ignore.
• extractRawText for plain-text indexing pipelines.
• embedStyleMap / readEmbeddedStyleMap for mammoth-compatible in-document style maps.
• CLI bin/elephant-php for .docx → HTML/Markdown from the terminal.

See ROADMAP.md for the gap with mammoth.js (mostly DSL edge cases, checkbox form fields, and OMML equations — all areas where mammoth itself has limitations).

Installation

composer require endless-creativity/elephant-php

Requires PHP 8.2+.

Usage

HTML

use EndlessCreativity\ElephantPhp\Converter;

$result = (new Converter())->convertToHtml('/path/to/file.docx');

echo $result->value;             // semantic HTML
foreach ($result->messages as $message) {
    fwrite(STDERR, "[{$message->type->value}] {$message->message}\n");
}

Markdown

$result = (new Converter())->convertToMarkdown('/path/to/file.docx');

file_put_contents('article.md', $result->value);

Plain text

$result = (new Converter())->extractRawText('/path/to/file.docx');

// Paragraphs are separated by "\n\n", everything else just contributes
// its descendant text. Useful for indexing/search pipelines.
echo $result->value;

Custom style map

Mammoth's DSL is supported as a list of rule strings. Rules are tried in order; the first match wins. The default heading map (Heading 1..6 → h1..h6) is appended after your rules.

$converter = new Converter(styleMap: [
    "p[style-name='Aside'] => aside.callout",
    "p[style-name='Quote'] => blockquote > p:fresh",
    "r[style-name='Code'] => code",
    "comment-reference => sup",                    // opt in to comments
    "highlight[color='yellow'] => mark.yellow",
    "br[type='page'] => hr",
    "p[style-name='List Paragraph'] =>",           // silence common warning
]);

$html = $converter->convertToHtml('/path/to/file.docx')->value;

Custom image handler

By default, images are embedded as data: URIs. Plug in your own ImageHandler to write to disk / S3 / a CDN / whatever, returning the final <img> attributes.

use EndlessCreativity\ElephantPhp\Document\Image;
use EndlessCreativity\ElephantPhp\Image\ImageHandler;

$handler = new class implements ImageHandler {
    public function attributes(Image $image): array {
        $bytes = ($image->readBytes)();
        $hash = hash('sha256', $bytes);
        $ext = ['image/png' => 'png', 'image/jpeg' => 'jpg'][$image->contentType] ?? 'bin';
        $path = "uploads/{$hash}.{$ext}";
        file_put_contents(__DIR__ . "/public/{$path}", $bytes);
        return ['src' => "/{$path}"];
    }
};

$converter = new Converter(imageHandler: $handler);

Embedded style map (read / write)

Mammoth supports embedding the style map as a part of the docx itself under mammoth/style-map. Read / write round-trips:

// Write
$bytes = Converter::embedStyleMap('/in.docx', "p[style-name='Aside'] => p.aside");
file_put_contents('/out.docx', $bytes);

// Read
$rules = Converter::readEmbeddedStyleMap('/out.docx');

CLI

vendor/bin/elephant-php /path/to/file.docx                  # → HTML to stdout
vendor/bin/elephant-php --markdown /path/to/file.docx       # → Markdown to stdout
vendor/bin/elephant-php /path/to/file.docx out.html         # → HTML to file

Conversion warnings are written to stderr regardless of the output destination.

Warnings on real-world documents

The following messages are expected and don't indicate malfunctions:

• Unrecognised paragraph style: 'List Paragraph' (Style ID: ListParagraph) — Word applies this to list items; the default style map only covers headings. Add p[style-name='List Paragraph'] => to silence.
• Unrecognised run style: 'FootnoteReference' — same mechanism inside footnotes.xml.
• Image of type image/bmp is unlikely to display in web browsers — informational; the <img> is still emitted.

Development

composer install
composer test     # Pest
composer stan     # PHPStan level 8
composer format   # Laravel Pint

Project guidance and porting conventions live in CLAUDE.md. Limitations and roadmap items vs mammoth in ROADMAP.md. Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

BSD-2-Clause. Copyright © 2026 Endless Creativity (PHP port) and © 2013 Michael Williamson (mammoth.js, from which this work derives its algorithmic structure and test fixtures).