Can we Read the text contents from PDF using .net

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  • Start date Start date
Can we Read the text contents from PDF using .net.

If possible means what to do.
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PDF is a collection of objects - it's not formatted text.

So you cna read the text - tho maybe not in a meaningful manner
 
Here is what I do:

''' <summary>
''' Gets the PDF text from a file
''' requires pdftotext.exe from http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf
''' </summary>
''' <param name="filename">The filename.</param>
''' <returns>PDF Text</returns>
Public Function getPDFtext(ByVal filename As String) As String
Dim p As New System.Diagnostics.Process
Dim std_out As IO.StreamReader
Dim txtStdout As String = ""

Try

p.StartInfo.FileName = "Asset Search\pdftotext.exe"
p.StartInfo.Arguments = filename & " -"
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = False
p.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = True
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = True

p.Start()
std_out = p.StandardOutput()

'Get the text from standard output
txtStdout = std_out.ReadToEnd()

std_out.Close()
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox("Error in while extracting PDF text, the error is: " &
ex.Message.ToString)
End Try

Return txtStdout
End Function

I wouldn't use it for anything serious, business critical, or Realtime. For
that you should probably go with a commercial control like
http://www.pdfonline.com/. But for quick and dirty text extraction it works
fine for me.

Best Regards,

Chris
 
Just to clarify the following line should point the the actual pdftotext.exe
program

p.StartInfo.FileName = "Asset Search\pdftotext.exe" <---Points to location
of pdftotext.exe

Chris
 
If you want to pull information in some type of format my advice is to
purchase some sdk software (suggestions: OmniPage or ABBYY). The
software will allow you to extract information or images from a pdf. I
have never used the sdk kit however I have used the software and it
does extremely well when we use it to extract data from a pdf and
export it as an excel file.
 
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