PDF parser library recommendation - article extraction

Question

I need to parse PDF documents written in multi-column layout containing articles. Specifically, I need to extract articles, article headers, images, tables, lists, font styles, and then create a custom single-column html for each PDF while maintaining the structure and the order of the articles.

I have tried pdfbox but did not have much luck due to lack of documentation.

I am looking for a PDF parser library with well and self explanatory API documentation. Can you please make a recommendation?

Answer 1

Consider using the LEADTOOLS PDF Library. You can find online documentation for the PDF classes in the toolkit included with code examples for most classes.

Disclaimer: I am an employee of the toolkit’s vendor

The PDFDocument class can be used to parse text items (characters), images, rectangles and hyperlinks, annotations, form fields, digital signatures as well as the fonts used in these items.

The .NET code to parse some objects from a PDF this would look like the following:

using (PDFDocument document = new PDFDocument(pdfFileName)) 
{ 
   PDFParsePagesOptions options = PDFParsePagesOptions.All;
   document.ParsePages(options, 1, -1); 

   foreach (PDFDocumentPage page in document.Pages) 
   {
      IList<PDFFont> fonts = page.Fonts; 
      IList<PDFObject> objects = page.Objects; //text (characters), images or rectangles  
      IList<PDFHyperlink> hyperlinks = page.Hyperlinks; 
   }
}

Answer 2

You can extract detailed text information using Docotic.Pdf library. I am co-author of this library. Here is the basic C# sample:

using (var pdf = new PdfDocument("your_document.pdf"))
{
    PdfPage page = pdf.Pages[0];
    foreach (PdfTextData data in page.GetWords())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(
            $"{{\n" +
            $"  text: '{data.Text}',\n" +
            $"  bounds: {data.Bounds},\n" +
            $"  font name: '{data.Font.Name}',\n" +
            $"  font size: {data.FontSize},\n" +
            $"  transformation matrix: {data.TransformationMatrix},\n" +
            $"  rendering mode: '{data.RenderingMode}',\n" +
            $"  brush: {data.Brush},\n" +
            $"  pen: {data.Pen}\n" +
            $"}},"
        );
    }
}

You can also extract text chunks with other objects like images and vector paths. Read Extract text from PDF in C# for more detail.