unoconv return error when running as www-data - csv

Question

When running this from command line as root it works
unoconv -f csv $file
But when running it as www-data this error is returned
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/unoconv", line 1114, in <module>
office_environ(of)
File "/usr/bin/unoconv", line 203, in office_environ
os.environ['PATH'] = realpath(office.basepath, 'program') + os.pathsep + os.environ['PATH']
File "/usr/lib/python3.4/os.py", line 633, in __getitem__
raise KeyError(key) from None
KeyError: 'PATH'
update
echo shell_exec('echo $PATH');
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

Answer 1

centos 7.3 with php via php-fpm
the env in php is cleaned by php-fpm
u can use putenv to set evn["PATH"] in php code, examples
putenv("PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin");
var_dump(shell_exec('unoconv -vvvv -f pdf -o 123.pdf 123.doc));
or u can set env use one line shell cmd
var_dump(shell_exec('PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin'.' unoconv -vvvv -f pdf -o 123.pdf 123.doc));
or u can change /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf to pass the env to php, add this line
clean_env = no
and the restart php-fpm
systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Answer 2

The PHP call you used (pasted from chat):
exec("unoconv -f csv $file")
My guess is that exec() is giving you an environment that is too limited. To work around this, you could set up a polled directory. The PHP script would copy files to be converted into the polled directory and wait for the files to be converted.
Then create a bash script (either running as root or a somewhat more secure user) to run in an infinite loop and check the polled directory for any incoming files. See How to keep polling file in a directory till it arrives in Unix for what the bash script might look like.
When the bash script sees incoming files, it runs unoconv.

Answer 3

Found a solution myself by running libreoffice directly
sudo libreoffice --headless --convert-to csv --outdir $tmp_path $file