Extract text from a PDF document

(if you are lucky)

Description

The submission calls on PDFTextStripper class of Ben Litchfield's PDFBox Java library to extract text from a PDF document.

1. Download PDFBox library from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfbox/
2. Download FontBox library from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontbox/
3. Modify the file paths in pdfParseDemo.m
4. Enable cell mode and step through pdfParseDemo.m

The code does not handle files that have 'Content Copying' permission protected by a password; collaboration to remedy the issue is enthusiastically welcomed!

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.4 (R2007a)

[Dimitri Shvorob]

See also this submission:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=17839&objectType=file

[Zach Koval]

I am lucky, I guess. Worked ok, except the warning that Dimitri mentions.

[Jonatan Olofsson]

Apparently, pdfbox creates two objects on instantiation and loading respectively. I got rid of the warning mentioned in the code by using "pdfdoc = org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.load(filename)" directly (also, .apache added since newer releases of pdfbox).

Also, after the pdfdoc variable is created (inside a try..catch), "pdfdoc.close()" must also be called.

[Brahim HAMADICHAREF]

update to the most recent version 1.3.1 and then
error messages disappear when you use
pdfDoc.getDocument().close;

[mathworks2011]

V Poor. Does not work.

The author even notes it does not work inside the m-file!

java.lang.Throwable: Warning: You did not close the PDF Document
at org.pdfbox.cos.COSDocument.finalize(COSDocument.java:418)
at java.lang.ref.Finalizer.invokeFinalizeMethod(Native Method)
at java.lang.ref.Finalizer.runFinalizer(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ref.Finalizer.access$100(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ref.Finalizer$FinalizerThread.run(Unknown Source)