pull data from a pdf file to store in sql

[kthequeen]

Is it possible to pull data( text contents and the file attribues, like filename ) from a pdf file and store in sql?
..using c#

I have web app with 100+ pdf files that I need keyword search capability for. It would produce results with link(s) to the corresponding pdf file. Not sure if this is possible.

thanks!

[Shashi Sadasivan]

it will be possible.
Though do you also want to read text contained inside the PDF file?

You would have to create a seperate program (could be console or windows application based, or Asp .Net also if you want) use the DirectoryInfo Class and fetch all the files contained in the directory using FileInfo.
Once you have all the files you wamt, you can insert them into your datatbase table

[kthequeen]

it will be possible.
Though do you also want to read text contained inside the PDF file?

Yes I would like to read the actual text inside the pdf. I found some info on how to convert to a text file. Perhaps I can do that and import to sql. I would just need a filename column that corresponds to the exported (text) from the pdf. What do you think?

[Shashi Sadasivan]

Hi,
Since you have a lot of PDF files, and there would be significant amount of text in it, i think that storing all the text in the database, and searching for text within that will take a lot of time.

Have you looked any of the desktop search API's ?

Google provides one, but I havent looked into it, and am not sure on how you would integrate, but it would be a easier way out (You would have to keep all the PDF files within the same folder, or atleast should be within the same root path.

[kthequeen]

hi Shashi, thank you for the replies. I'll take a look at those APIs.
merry Christmas!

[diegomaradona21]

Is it possible to pull data( text contents and the file attribues, like filename ) from a pdf file and store in sql?
..using c#

I have web app with 100+ pdf files that I need keyword search capability for. It would produce results with link(s) to the corresponding pdf file. Not sure if this is possible.

thanks!

you can easily get text from PDF files using PDFBox library.
use google to find out how to use it in .NET2.0 because natively it's Java library.
you will also need IKVM.GNU

try this
how to use pdfbox with c#

[kthequeen]

Diego thank you very much! very helpful.