[RESOLVED] Advice on reading tabular data from PDF format.

Hi guys,

I am working on a small project where I need to read some text from PDF files. After some googling I tried iTextSharp which can extract the text but states that it is not possible to read tabular data. I understand the why but wonder if there is a library anybody has used that is able to.

Here is an example of the layout of the PDF:
Attachment 99119
With iTextSharp the text is read line by line ignoring the column break between.

Has anybody come across a (preferably free) library that is able to read text from sections so that I can grab the text from the left "column" and then the text from the right?

Thanks
Jay

I have got it working using iTextSharp. My code is below in case anybody else finds it useful. It will extract the text within the left half of a PDF page. You would just change the rectangle dimensions to suit your own region:

VB.NET Code:

'iTextSharp Imports
Imports iTextSharp.text
Imports iTextSharp.text.pdf
Imports iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser
 
Public Function GetPDFTextFromRectangle(ByVal PDFPath As String, ByVal PageNo As Integer) As String
 
    Dim Reader As PdfReader = Nothing
    Dim PDFOutput As String = Nothing
 
    Try
        Reader = New PdfReader(PDFPath)
 
        'Get the Page Width/Height    
        Dim PageHeight As Single = Reader.GetPageSize(PageNo).Height
        Dim PageWidth As Single = Reader.GetPageSize(PageNo).Width
        'Rectangle representing the area that contains the text. Parameters:
        '  Bottom-Left-X
        '  Bottom-Left-Y
        '  Top-Right-X
        '  Top-Right-Y
        Dim PageRect As New iTextSharp.text.Rectangle(0, PageHeight, PageWidth / 2, 0)
        'Required Filter and Strategy to extract text
        Dim Filter As RenderFilter = New RegionTextRenderFilter(PageRect)
        Dim Strategy As ITextExtractionStrategy = New FilteredTextRenderListener( _
                                                  New LocationTextExtractionStrategy, _
                                                  Filter)
        'Extract the text from the rectangle region of the given page number
        PDFOutput = PdfTextExtractor.GetTextFromPage(Reader, PageNo, Strategy)
 
    Catch Ex As Exception
        MessageBox.Show(Ex.Message.ToString)
    Finally
        Reader.Close()
        Return PDFOutput
    End Try
 
End Function