(PHP 4 >= 4.1.0, PHP 5, PHP 7)
The COM class allows you to instantiate an OLE compatible COM object and call its methods and access its properties.
$obj = new COM("Application.ID")
$module_name
   [, mixed $server_name
   [, int $codepage
   [, string $typelib
  ]]] )COM class constructor. The parameters have the following meanings:
NULL, the object is run using the default for the
       application.  The default is typically to run it on the local machine,
       although the administrator might have configured the application to
       launch on a different machine.
      
      
       If you specify a non-NULL value for server, PHP will refuse to load
       the object unless the  configuration option
       is set to TRUE.
      
      
       If server_name is an array, it should contain the
       following elements (case sensitive!).  Note that they are all optional
       (although you need to specify both Username and Password together); if
       you omit the Server setting, the default server will be used (as
       mentioned above), and the instantiation of the object will not be
       affected by the 
       directive.
       
| server_namekey | type | description | 
|---|---|---|
| Server | string | The name of the server. | 
| Username | string | The username to connect as. | 
| Password | string | The password for Username. | 
| Flags | integer | One or more of the following constants, logically OR'd together: CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,CLSCTX_INPROC_HANDLER,CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER,CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER,CLSCTX_SERVERandCLSCTX_ALL.  The default value if not
            specified here isCLSCTX_SERVERif you also
            omitServer, orCLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVERif you do specify a
            server.  You should consult the Microsoft documentation for
            CoCreateInstance for more information on the meaning of these
            constants; you will typically never have to use them. | 
CP_ACP (use system default ANSI code page - the
       default if this parameter is omitted),
       CP_MACCP,
       CP_OEMCP, CP_SYMBOL,
       CP_THREAD_ACP (use codepage/locale set for the
       current executing thread), CP_UTF7
       and CP_UTF8.  You may also use the number for a
       given codepage; consult the Microsoft documentation for more details on
       codepages and their numeric values.
      
     The returned object is an overloaded object, which means that PHP does not see any fixed methods as it does with regular classes; instead, any property or method accesses are passed through to COM.
Starting with PHP 5, PHP will automatically detect methods that accept parameters by reference, and will automatically convert regular PHP variables to a form that can be passed by reference. This means that you can call the method very naturally; you needn't go to any extra effort in your code.
In PHP 4, to pass parameters by reference you need to create an instance of the VARIANT class to wrap the byref parameters.
In PHP versions prior to 5, a number of not very pleasant hacks meant that the following method names were not passed through to COM and were handled directly by PHP. PHP 5 eliminates these things; read the details below to determine how to fix your scripts. These magic method names are case insensitive.
Artificially adds a reference count to the COM object.
You should never need to use this method. It exists as a logical complement to the Release() method below.
Artificially removes a reference count from the COM object.
You should never need to use this method. Its existence in PHP is a bug designed to work around a bug that keeps COM objects running longer than they should.
   These pseudo methods are only available if
   com_isenum() returns TRUE, in which case, they hide
   any methods with the same names that might otherwise be provided by the
   COM object.  These methods have all been eliminated in PHP 5, and you
   should use For Each instead.
  
Returns a variant representing a SafeArray that has 10 elements; each element will be an empty/null variant. This function was supposed to return an array containing all the elements from the iterator, but was never completed. Do not use.
   Returns a variant representing the next element available from
   the iterator, or FALSE when there are no more elements.
  
Returns a variant representing the previous element available from
   the iterator, or FALSE when there are no more elements.
  
Rewinds the iterator back to the start.
Example #1 COM example (1)
<?php
// starting word
$word = new COM("word.application") or die("Unable to instantiate Word");
echo "Loaded Word, version {$word->Version}\n";
//bring it to front
$word->Visible = 1;
//open an empty document
$word->Documents->Add();
//do some weird stuff
$word->Selection->TypeText("This is a test...");
$word->Documents[1]->SaveAs("Useless test.doc");
//closing word
$word->Quit();
//free the object
$word = null;
?>
Example #2 COM example (2)
<?php
$conn = new COM("ADODB.Connection") or die("Cannot start ADO");
$conn->Open("Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source=localhost;
Initial Catalog=database; User ID=user; Password=password");
$rs = $conn->Execute("SELECT * FROM sometable");    // Recordset
$num_columns = $rs->Fields->Count();
echo $num_columns . "\n";
for ($i=0; $i < $num_columns; $i++) {
    $fld[$i] = $rs->Fields($i);
}
$rowcount = 0;
while (!$rs->EOF) {
    for ($i=0; $i < $num_columns; $i++) {
        echo $fld[$i]->value . "\t";
    }
    echo "\n";
    $rowcount++;            // increments rowcount
    $rs->MoveNext();
}
$rs->Close();
$conn->Close();
$rs = null;
$conn = null;
?>