Alternative to PDFBox - .NET Version

[FastEddie]

I am trying to read a PDF file line by line using PDFBox.

This is the first time I have ever attempted to do this with a PDF so I am not sure what I was expecting but I thought I would end up with some "mark up", which I could use to parse the lines I was looking for out of the file.

Anyway it didn't work out the way I had planned and I am not sure if that is because I am using the wrong tool or not using the right tool correctly. I managed to extract the text but I didn't really see any mark up that would be usefull to parse the file.

Does anybody have any experiece with extracting test from PDFs. What tool(s) do you recomend?

[jmcilhinney]

I've never used it but it seems to me that the most commonly used managed PDF library is iText#.

[su ki]

hey FastEddie
use itextsharp dll and following is the code posted in vbforums for reading a pdf file

enjoy :-)

Imports iTextSharp.text.pdf
 
Public Function ParsePdfText(ByVal sourcePDF As String, Optional ByVal fromPageNum As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal toPageNum As Integer = 0) As String
    Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder()
    Try
        Dim reader As New PdfReader(sourcePDF)
        Dim pageBytes() As Byte = Nothing
        Dim token As PRTokeniser = Nothing
        Dim tknType As Integer = -1
        Dim tknValue As String = String.Empty
        
        If fromPageNum = 0 Then
            fromPageNum = 1
        End If
        If toPageNum = 0 Then
            toPageNum = reader.NumberOfPages
        End If
        
        If fromPageNum > toPageNum Then
            Throw New ApplicationException("Parameter error: The value of fromPageNum can " & "not be larger than the value of toPageNum")
        End If
        
        For i As Integer = fromPageNum To toPageNum Step 1
            pageBytes = reader.GetPageContent(i)
            If Not IsNothing(pageBytes) Then
                token = New PRTokeniser(pageBytes)
                While token.NextToken()
                    tknType = token.TokenType()
                    tknValue = token.StringValue
                    If tknType = PRTokeniser.TK_STRING Then
                        sb.Append(token.StringValue)
                        'I need to add these additional tests to properly add whitespace to the output string
                    ElseIf tknType = 1 AndAlso tknValue = "-600" Then
                        sb.Append(" ")
                    ElseIf tknType = 10 AndAlso tknValue = "TJ" Then
                        sb.Append(" ")
                    End If
                End While
            End If
        Next i
    Catch ex As Exception
        MessageBox.Show("Exception occured. " & ex.Message)
        Return String.Empty
    End Try
    Return sb.ToString()
End Function

[danasegarane]

Or You can for the ABC Pdf

[rataro]

Hi, I tryed the code posted by mr. Su_ki and there's some troubles. Even you try to "make appear" the spaces what Ive discovered is that "end of line"'s are not present. It seems to be related to Tj tokens but I got nothing very clear about this topic yet, can you lend a hand?