Read pdf files using php

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Read pdf files with php

Hi,

I have a bulk of pdf documents. I want to read that using php script. I searched a lot, but everyone is about creating pdf files. Here I dont want to create pdf file but I want to read it. Is there any way to read it php?

-Arun

Define "read" - do you want to extract the text contents? What about images? — Pekka, Dec 17 '10 at 14:17
Similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1004478/read-pdf-files-with-php ? — Adnan, Dec 17 '10 at 14:18

robjmills · Answer 1 · 2010-12-17T14:59:11.743

0

You can easily read the contents of a PDF file using a command-line utility like Pdftotext which you can call through exec.

This is an example of what i mean, actually using system

system("pdftotext your.pdf /tmp/txtfile.txt");
$text = file_get_contents("/tmp/txtfile.txt");

EDIT

didn't know about the dash syntax - this is even better:

$content = shell_exec('pdftotext your.pdf -');

This does require pdftotext to be installed on your server though. On a CentOS server this would be:

yum install xpdf

edited Dec 17 '10 at 14:59

answered Dec 17 '10 at 14:21

robjmills

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Thanks seengee for your fast reply. But can u make it more clear? call through exec means? I cant call it using a php file? P – Arun SS Dec 17 '10 at 14:29
@user please make clear first what you need. – Pekka Dec 17 '10 at 14:45
how to install pdftotext? where to get it? – Arun SS Dec 17 '10 at 14:55
I have downloaded pdftotext. And now confused where to install it. Am using wamp server in a windows machine. – Arun SS Dec 17 '10 at 15:09
Done, Its working. I copied pdftotext in my system and gave full path to pdftotext.exe and it worked fine. Thanks to all replied to this thread, especially seengee. – Arun SS Dec 17 '10 at 15:14
ok, mark my answer as correct then please :) – robjmills Dec 17 '10 at 15:15
How to run this in linux server? I tried it in my wamp. But my server is linux. – Arun SS Dec 21 '10 at 08:17
if you have it installed try `$content = shell_exec('/usr/local/bin/pdftotext your.pdf -');` – robjmills Dec 21 '10 at 09:10
I havent installed it. Also I cant find the /usr/local/bin path. – Arun SS Dec 21 '10 at 09:30
have you tried installing it? what Linux OS are you on? – robjmills Dec 21 '10 at 10:14
Please find the server info I got from phpinfo. Linux p3slh188.shr.phx3.secureserver.net 2.4.21-63.ELsmp #1 SMP Tue Nov 3 18:23:59 EST 2009 i686 – Arun SS Dec 21 '10 at 10:50

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 17 '10 at 14:44

To just get the text from a PDF file, try these:
- http://davidwalsh.name/read-pdf-doc-file-php
- http://www.webcheatsheet.com/php/reading_clean_text_from_pdf.php (more in-depth)

For a more heavyweight solutions, have a look at:
- http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/

Read pdf files using php

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