org.apache.pdfbox.util
Class PDFTextStripper

java.lang.Object
  org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFStreamEngine
      org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFTextStripper

Direct Known Subclasses:

PDFHighlighter, PDFText2HTML, PDFTextStripperByArea, PrintTextLocations

public class PDFTextStripper
extends PDFStreamEngine

This class will take a pdf document and strip out all of the text and ignore the formatting and such. Please note; it is up to clients of this class to verify that a specific user has the correct permissions to extract text from the PDF document. The basic flow of this process is that we get a document and use a series of processXXX() functions that work on smaller and smaller chunks of the page. Eventually, we fully process each page and then print it.

Version:

$Revision: 1.70 $

Author:

Ben Litchfield

Field Summary

protected Vector<List<TextPosition>>	charactersByArticle The charactersByArticle is used to extract text by article divisions.
protected PDDocument	document The document to read.
protected String	lineSeparator The platforms lineseparator.
protected Writer	output The stream to write the output to.
protected String	outputEncoding encoding that text will be written in (or null).

Constructor Summary

PDFTextStripper()
Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object.

PDFTextStripper(Properties props)
Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object.

PDFTextStripper(String encoding)
Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object.

Method Summary

protected void	endArticle() End an article.
protected void	endDocument(PDDocument pdf) This method is available for subclasses of this class.
protected void	endPage(PDPage page) End a page.
float	getAverageCharTolerance() Get the current character width-based tolerance value that is being used to estimate where spaces in text should be added.
protected Vector<List<TextPosition>>	getCharactersByArticle() Character strings are grouped by articles.
protected int	getCurrentPageNo() Get the current page number that is being processed.
PDOutlineItem	getEndBookmark() Get the bookmark where text extraction should end, inclusive.
int	getEndPage() This will get the last page that will be extracted.
String	getLineSeparator() This will get the line separator.
protected Writer	getOutput() The output stream that is being written to.
String	getPageSeparator() This will get the page separator.
float	getSpacingTolerance() Get the current space width-based tolerance value that is being used to estimate where spaces in text should be added.
PDOutlineItem	getStartBookmark() Get the bookmark where text extraction should start, inclusive.
int	getStartPage() This is the page that the text extraction will start on.
String	getText(COSDocument doc) Deprecated.
String	getText(PDDocument doc) This will return the text of a document.
String	getWordSeparator() This will get the word separator.
String	inspectFontEncoding(String str) Reverse characters of a compound Arabic glyph.
protected void	processPage(PDPage page, COSStream content) This will process the contents of a page.
protected void	processPages(List<COSObjectable> pages) This will process all of the pages and the text that is in them.
protected void	processTextPosition(TextPosition text) This will process a TextPosition object and add the text to the list of characters on a page.
void	resetEngine() This method must be called between processing documents.
void	setAverageCharTolerance(float averageCharToleranceValue) Set the character width-based tolerance value that is used to estimate where spaces in text should be added.
void	setEndBookmark(PDOutlineItem aEndBookmark) Set the bookmark where the text extraction should stop.
void	setEndPage(int endPageValue) This will set the last page to be extracted by this class.
void	setLineSeparator(String separator) Set the desired line separator for output text.
void	setPageSeparator(String separator) Set the desired page separator for output text.
void	setShouldSeparateByBeads(boolean aShouldSeparateByBeads) Set if the text stripper should group the text output by a list of beads.
void	setSortByPosition(boolean newSortByPosition) The order of the text tokens in a PDF file may not be in the same as they appear visually on the screen.
void	setSpacingTolerance(float spacingToleranceValue) Set the space width-based tolerance value that is used to estimate where spaces in text should be added.
void	setStartBookmark(PDOutlineItem aStartBookmark) Set the bookmark where text extraction should start, inclusive.
void	setStartPage(int startPageValue) This will set the first page to be extracted by this class.
void	setSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText(boolean suppressDuplicateOverlappingTextValue) By default the text stripper will attempt to remove text that overlapps each other.
void	setWordSeparator(String separator) Set the desired word separator for output text.
boolean	shouldSeparateByBeads() This will tell if the text stripper should separate by beads.
boolean	shouldSortByPosition() This will tell if the text stripper should sort the text tokens before writing to the stream.
boolean	shouldSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText()
protected void	startArticle() Start a new article, which is typically defined as a column on a single page (also referred to as a bead).
protected void	startArticle(boolean isltr) Start a new article, which is typically defined as a column on a single page (also referred to as a bead).
protected void	startDocument(PDDocument pdf) This method is available for subclasses of this class.
protected void	startPage(PDPage page) Start a new page.
protected void	writeCharacters(TextPosition text) Write the string in TextPosition to the output stream.
protected void	writeLineSeparator() Write the line separator value to the output stream.
protected void	writePage() This will print the text of the processed page to "output".
protected void	writePageSeperator() Write the page separator value to the output stream.
protected void	writeString(String text) Write a Java string to the output stream.
void	writeText(COSDocument doc, Writer outputStream) Deprecated.
void	writeText(PDDocument doc, Writer outputStream) This will take a PDDocument and write the text of that document to the print writer.
protected void	writeWordSeparator() Write the word separator value to the output stream.

Methods inherited from class org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFStreamEngine

getColorSpaces, getCurrentPage, getFonts, getGraphicsStack, getGraphicsState, getGraphicsStates, getResources, getTextLineMatrix, getTextMatrix, getTotalCharCnt, getValidCharCnt, getXObjects, processEncodedText, processOperator, processOperator, processStream, processSubStream, registerOperatorProcessor, setColorSpaces, setFonts, setGraphicsStack, setGraphicsState, setGraphicsStates, setTextLineMatrix, setTextMatrix

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Field Detail

charactersByArticle

protected Vector<List<TextPosition>> charactersByArticle

The charactersByArticle is used to extract text by article divisions. For example a PDF that has two columns like a newspaper, we want to extract the first column and then the second column. In this example the PDF would have 2 beads(or articles), one for each column. The size of the charactersByArticle would be 5, because not all text on the screen will fall into one of the articles. The five divisions are shown below Text before first article first article text text between first article and second article second article text text after second article Most PDFs won't have any beads, so charactersByArticle will contain a single entry.

lineSeparator

protected String lineSeparator

The platforms lineseparator.

outputEncoding

protected String outputEncoding

encoding that text will be written in (or null).

document

protected PDDocument document

The document to read.

output

protected Writer output

The stream to write the output to.

Constructor Detail

PDFTextStripper

public PDFTextStripper()
                throws IOException

Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object. This object will load properties from PDFTextStripper.properties and will not do anything special to convert the text to a more encoding-specific output.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error loading the properties.

PDFTextStripper

public PDFTextStripper(Properties props)
                throws IOException

Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object. Loading all of the operator mappings from the properties object that is passed in. Does not convert the text to more encoding-specific output.

Parameters:

props - The properties containing the mapping of operators to PDFOperator classes.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error reading the properties.

PDFTextStripper

public PDFTextStripper(String encoding)
                throws IOException

Instantiate a new PDFTextStripper object. This object will load properties from PDFTextStripper.properties and will apply encoding-specific conversions to the output text.

Parameters:

encoding - The encoding that the output will be written in.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error reading the properties.

Method Detail

getText

public String getText(PDDocument doc)
               throws IOException

This will return the text of a document. See writeText.
NOTE: The document must not be encrypted when coming into this method.

Parameters:

doc - The document to get the text from.

Returns:

The text of the PDF document.

Throws:

IOException - if the doc state is invalid or it is encrypted.

getText

public String getText(COSDocument doc)
               throws IOException

Deprecated.

Parameters:

doc - The document to extract the text from.

Returns:

The document text.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error extracting the text.

See Also:

getText( PDDocument )

writeText

public void writeText(COSDocument doc,
                      Writer outputStream)
               throws IOException

Deprecated.

Parameters:

doc - The document to extract the text.

outputStream - The stream to write the text to.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error extracting the text.

See Also:

writeText( PDDocument, Writer )

resetEngine

public void resetEngine()

This method must be called between processing documents. The PDFStreamEngine caches information for the document between pages and this will release the cached information. This only needs to be called if processing a new document.

Overrides:

resetEngine in class PDFStreamEngine

writeText

public void writeText(PDDocument doc,
                      Writer outputStream)
               throws IOException

This will take a PDDocument and write the text of that document to the print writer.

Parameters:

doc - The document to get the data from.

outputStream - The location to put the text.

Throws:

IOException - If the doc is in an invalid state.

processPages

protected void processPages(List<COSObjectable> pages)
                     throws IOException

This will process all of the pages and the text that is in them.

Parameters:

pages - The pages object in the document.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error parsing the text.

startDocument

protected void startDocument(PDDocument pdf)
                      throws IOException

This method is available for subclasses of this class. It will be called before processing of the document start.

Parameters:

pdf - The PDF document that is being processed.

Throws:

IOException - If an IO error occurs.

endDocument

protected void endDocument(PDDocument pdf)
                    throws IOException

This method is available for subclasses of this class. It will be called after processing of the document finishes.

Parameters:

pdf - The PDF document that is being processed.

Throws:

IOException - If an IO error occurs.

processPage

protected void processPage(PDPage page,
                           COSStream content)
                    throws IOException

This will process the contents of a page.

Parameters:

page - The page to process.

content - The contents of the page.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error processing the page.

startArticle

protected void startArticle()
                     throws IOException

Start a new article, which is typically defined as a column on a single page (also referred to as a bead). This assumes that the primary direction of text is left to right. Default implementation is to do nothing. Subclasses may provide additional information.

Throws:

IOException - If there is any error writing to the stream.

startArticle

protected void startArticle(boolean isltr)
                     throws IOException

Start a new article, which is typically defined as a column on a single page (also referred to as a bead). Default implementation is to do nothing. Subclasses may provide additional information.

Parameters:

isltr - true if primary direction of text is left to right.

Throws:

IOException - If there is any error writing to the stream.

endArticle

protected void endArticle()
                   throws IOException

End an article. Default implementation is to do nothing. Subclasses may provide additional information.

Throws:

IOException - If there is any error writing to the stream.

startPage

protected void startPage(PDPage page)
                  throws IOException

Start a new page. Default implementation is to do nothing. Subclasses may provide additional information.

Parameters:

page - The page we are about to process.

Throws:

IOException - If there is any error writing to the stream.

endPage

protected void endPage(PDPage page)
                throws IOException

End a page. Default implementation is to do nothing. Subclasses may provide additional information.

Parameters:

page - The page we are about to process.

Throws:

IOException - If there is any error writing to the stream.

writePage

protected void writePage()
                  throws IOException

This will print the text of the processed page to "output". It will estimate, based on the coordinates of the text, where newlines and word spacings should be placed. The text will be sorted only if that feature was enabled.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error writing the text.

writePageSeperator

protected void writePageSeperator()
                           throws IOException

Write the page separator value to the output stream.

Throws:

IOException - If there is a problem writing out the pageseparator to the document.

writeLineSeparator

protected void writeLineSeparator()
                           throws IOException

Write the line separator value to the output stream.

Throws:

IOException - If there is a problem writing out the lineseparator to the document.

writeWordSeparator

protected void writeWordSeparator()
                           throws IOException

Write the word separator value to the output stream.

Throws:

IOException - If there is a problem writing out the wordseparator to the document.

writeCharacters

protected void writeCharacters(TextPosition text)
                        throws IOException

Write the string in TextPosition to the output stream.

Parameters:

text - The text to write to the stream.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error when writing the text.

writeString

protected void writeString(String text)
                    throws IOException

Write a Java string to the output stream.

Parameters:

text - The text to write to the stream.

Throws:

IOException - If there is an error when writing the text.

processTextPosition

protected void processTextPosition(TextPosition text)

This will process a TextPosition object and add the text to the list of characters on a page. It takes care of overlapping text.

Overrides:

processTextPosition in class PDFStreamEngine

Parameters:

text - The text to process.

getStartPage

public int getStartPage()

This is the page that the text extraction will start on. The pages start at page 1. For example in a 5 page PDF document, if the start page is 1 then all pages will be extracted. If the start page is 4 then pages 4 and 5 will be extracted. The default value is 1.

Returns:

Value of property startPage.

setStartPage

public void setStartPage(int startPageValue)

This will set the first page to be extracted by this class.

Parameters:

startPageValue - New value of property startPage.

getEndPage

public int getEndPage()

This will get the last page that will be extracted. This is inclusive, for example if a 5 page PDF an endPage value of 5 would extract the entire document, an end page of 2 would extract pages 1 and 2. This defaults to Integer.MAX_VALUE such that all pages of the pdf will be extracted.

Returns:

Value of property endPage.

setEndPage

public void setEndPage(int endPageValue)

This will set the last page to be extracted by this class.

Parameters:

endPageValue - New value of property endPage.

setLineSeparator

public void setLineSeparator(String separator)

Set the desired line separator for output text. The line.separator system property is used if the line separator preference is not set explicitly using this method.

Parameters:

separator - The desired line separator string.

getLineSeparator

public String getLineSeparator()

This will get the line separator.

Returns:

The desired line separator string.

setPageSeparator

public void setPageSeparator(String separator)

Set the desired page separator for output text. The line.separator system property is used if the page separator preference is not set explicitly using this method.

Parameters:

separator - The desired page separator string.

getWordSeparator

public String getWordSeparator()

This will get the word separator.

Returns:

The desired word separator string.

setWordSeparator

public void setWordSeparator(String separator)

Set the desired word separator for output text. The PDFBox text extraction algorithm will output a space character if there is enough space between two words. By default a space character is used. If you need and accurate count of characters that are found in a PDF document then you might want to set the word separator to the empty string.

Parameters:

separator - The desired page separator string.

getPageSeparator

public String getPageSeparator()

This will get the page separator.

Returns:

The page separator string.

shouldSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText

public boolean shouldSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText()

Returns:

Returns the suppressDuplicateOverlappingText.

getCurrentPageNo

protected int getCurrentPageNo()

Get the current page number that is being processed.

Returns:

A 1 based number representing the current page.

getOutput

protected Writer getOutput()

The output stream that is being written to.

Returns:

The stream that output is being written to.

getCharactersByArticle

protected Vector<List<TextPosition>> getCharactersByArticle()

Character strings are grouped by articles. It is quite common that there will only be a single article. This returns a List that contains List objects, the inner lists will contain TextPosition objects.

Returns:

A double List of TextPositions for all text strings on the page.

setSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText

public void setSuppressDuplicateOverlappingText(boolean suppressDuplicateOverlappingTextValue)

By default the text stripper will attempt to remove text that overlapps each other. Word paints the same character several times in order to make it look bold. By setting this to false all text will be extracted, which means that certain sections will be duplicated, but better performance will be noticed.

Parameters:

suppressDuplicateOverlappingTextValue - The suppressDuplicateOverlappingText to set.

shouldSeparateByBeads

public boolean shouldSeparateByBeads()

This will tell if the text stripper should separate by beads.

Returns:

If the text will be grouped by beads.

setShouldSeparateByBeads

public void setShouldSeparateByBeads(boolean aShouldSeparateByBeads)

Set if the text stripper should group the text output by a list of beads. The default value is true!

Parameters:

aShouldSeparateByBeads - The new grouping of beads.

getEndBookmark

public PDOutlineItem getEndBookmark()

Get the bookmark where text extraction should end, inclusive. Default is null.

Returns:

The ending bookmark.

setEndBookmark

public void setEndBookmark(PDOutlineItem aEndBookmark)

Set the bookmark where the text extraction should stop.

Parameters:

aEndBookmark - The ending bookmark.

getStartBookmark

public PDOutlineItem getStartBookmark()

Get the bookmark where text extraction should start, inclusive. Default is null.

Returns:

The starting bookmark.

setStartBookmark

public void setStartBookmark(PDOutlineItem aStartBookmark)

Set the bookmark where text extraction should start, inclusive.

Parameters:

aStartBookmark - The starting bookmark.

shouldSortByPosition

public boolean shouldSortByPosition()

This will tell if the text stripper should sort the text tokens before writing to the stream.

Returns:

true If the text tokens will be sorted before being written.

setSortByPosition

public void setSortByPosition(boolean newSortByPosition)

The order of the text tokens in a PDF file may not be in the same as they appear visually on the screen. For example, a PDF writer may write out all text by font, so all bold or larger text, then make a second pass and write out the normal text.
The default is to not sort by position.

A PDF writer could choose to write each character in a different order. By default PDFBox does not sort the text tokens before processing them due to performance reasons.

Parameters:

newSortByPosition - Tell PDFBox to sort the text positions.

getSpacingTolerance

public float getSpacingTolerance()

Get the current space width-based tolerance value that is being used to estimate where spaces in text should be added. Note that the default value for this has been determined from trial and error.

Returns:

The current tolerance / scaling factor

setSpacingTolerance

public void setSpacingTolerance(float spacingToleranceValue)

Set the space width-based tolerance value that is used to estimate where spaces in text should be added. Note that the default value for this has been determined from trial and error. Setting this value larger will reduce the number of spaces added.

Parameters:

spacingToleranceValue - tolerance / scaling factor to use

getAverageCharTolerance

public float getAverageCharTolerance()

Get the current character width-based tolerance value that is being used to estimate where spaces in text should be added. Note that the default value for this has been determined from trial and error.

Returns:

The current tolerance / scaling factor

setAverageCharTolerance

public void setAverageCharTolerance(float averageCharToleranceValue)

Set the character width-based tolerance value that is used to estimate where spaces in text should be added. Note that the default value for this has been determined from trial and error. Setting this value larger will reduce the number of spaces added.

Parameters:

averageCharToleranceValue - average tolerance / scaling factor to use

inspectFontEncoding

public String inspectFontEncoding(String str)

Reverse characters of a compound Arabic glyph. When shouldSortByPosition() is true, inspect the sequence encoded by one glyph. If the glyph encodes two or more Arabic characters, reverse these characters from a logical order to a visual order. This ensures that the bidirectional algorithm that runs later will convert them back to a logical order.

Overrides:

inspectFontEncoding in class PDFStreamEngine

Parameters:

str - a string obtained from font.encoding()