PDF to XML conversion

[#1]

Hi all,



I asked a question in Acrobat SDK forum about using Acrobat standard SDK for automatic PDF to XML conversion on a server and I was told that Acrobat lisence does not permit that and I need to use the Adobe LiveCycle ES.



I just need to automatically convert the incoming PDF files to XML on a server (automating Acrobat Standard's "SaveAS XML" function)



Could you please tell me which LiveCyle component can do this for me and also give me its approximate price.



Thanks very much for your help,

Arash

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

What excactly are you trying to get in that XML file. The data from the PDF document, the metadata,etc.



Can you be a little bit more specific because there might be different products to do different things. I did a quick test with the SaveXML form Acrobat and it seem to contain only the metadata, but I'd lie to confirm.



Thanks,



Jasmin

[#3]

Hi Jasmin,<br /><br />Thanks for you reply. I need the content of the PDF file converted to XML. For example in the XML file that I get from Acrobat SaveAS XML function paragraphs are tagged with <p?>, tables are tagged with <table?>, table cells are tagged with <TD?>, table rows are tagged with <TR?> and so on. There are a few PDF to XML/HTML tools but none of them does a clean conversion for example they might break the content of a single cell into two parts and tag each part as an individual cell. These kind of bugs cause problem when I want to extract information from the XML file via Natural Language Processing. I have a small VB program that can be run from command line and gets a PDF file as Input and converts that PDF file to XML using Acrobat Standard and saves the generated XML file on the local drive. I want this program to run on a Server and converts all the incoming PDF files to XML. But I was told that the Acrobat Standard licence does not allow me to use Acrobat on a server for automatic batch conversion.<br /><br /> Thanks very much for your help.<br /><br />Following is part of an XML file generated by SaveAs XML function in Acrobat Standard 8.0:<br /><br />(I added Question marks to the tags manually so they would not be interpreted as HTML tags)<br /><br /><Table?><br /><br /><TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Master of Business Administration (MBA)Approved Course Schedule Information </TH?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /><TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Module Title </TH?><br /><br /><TD?><Figure? ActualText?="Leading Effectively "><br /><br /><ImageData? src=""/><br /><br />LeadingLeading EEffeffectivelyctively</?Figure><br /><br /></TD?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /> <TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Number of Credits </TH?><br /><br /><TD?>25 Credits </TD?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /><TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Subject Status </TH?><br /><br /><TD?>Mandatory </TD?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /><TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Quantity of Learning Experience </TH?><br /><br /><TD?>400 hours, broken down over Stages 1 and 2 as follows Directed Study 85 Independent Study 315 Total 400 </TD?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /> <TR?><br /><br /><TH?>Allocation of Marks </TH?><br /><br /><TD?>C/A </TD?><br /><br /><TD?>Project </TD?><br /><br /> <TD?>Practical </TD?><br /><br /> <TD?>Final </TD///?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /> <T/R><br /><br /><TD?/>0 </TD?><br /><br /> <TD?>100% </TD?><br /><br /><TD/?><br /><br /><TD?>0 </TD?><br /><br /></TR?><br /><br /></Table?>

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

So is this really a html representation of the PDF.



PDFG should be the product that can convert PDF into HTML. The operation is ExportPDF.



Jasmin

[#5]

Hi,

My requirement is send the xml to a server and there allow another application use this xml.



I am trying to use ASP to take this xml and save it on the server but I am unable to do it because dont know how. Is it possible?

Thanks,

merlin

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

You can definitely post XML to an ASP from a PDF. You need to add a submit button into the form and make sure you specify the location where you want to post the information to ( in you case XML). You also need to specify what you want to post (PDF, XML, XDP).



In your asp, you can then get the xml out of the request object.



Is that what you're trying to do?



Jasmin

[#7]

Hi Jasmin,



I am using Acrobat Pro 6 and when I defined the submit button I just saw FDF, HTML, XFDF and PDF. Now, If I want to get the xml I guess I could use the XFDF option. However, what should I do in asp in order to get this xfdf file. I read something about request object, but don't know it. Could you please let me know what is the syntax I need to use.

Thank you very much.

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

This is a java example, but the ASP should be very similar.



public static byte[] getRequestBufferAsBytes(HttpServletRequest request)

throws IOException, ServletException

{

ServletInputStream oInput = request.getInputStream();

long nContentLength = request.getContentLength();

String contentType = request.getContentType();

if(nContentLength <= 0L)

return null;

byte cContent[] = new byte[(int)nContentLength];

int nRead = 0;

int nToRead = (int)nContentLength;

int nBlkSize = 512;

byte cTemp[] = new byte[512];

do

{

int n = 0;

int i = 0;

if(nToRead - nRead < 512)

nBlkSize = nToRead - nRead;

n = oInput.read(cTemp, 0, nBlkSize);

for(i = 0; i < n; i++)

cContent[i + nRead] = cTemp[i];



nRead += i;

} while(nRead < nToRead);

Long nBytesRead = new Long(nRead);

return cContent;

}



Jasmin

[#9]

Jasmin,



I will try to do the convertion to asp.



Another question: what about if I try to call my WebService from a button in the pdf. My webservice is defined on Apache-Axis. Is valid the command soap.connect(myURL) from pdf javascript to connect to Apache-Axis?. Is that doc wrapped for SOAP when I use the soap command?. I am afraid i have more question, I am new in this matter.



Thank you very much for your answers

M

[#10]

hi, want to know how you did the conversion of pdf to xml using the acrobat standard??... did you use the acrobat javascript object?...

please as i need the function that properly does the conversion of pdf to xml...



Private oapp As New Acrobat.AcroApp

Private oavdoc As New Acrobat.AcroAVDoc

Private odoc As New Acrobat.AcroPDDoc

Dim ojs As Object

Dim osaveas As Object

Dim input As String



input = "d:\document\time.pdf"



If oavdoc.Open(input, Path.GetFileName(input)) Then

odoc = oavdoc.GetPDDoc()

ojs = odoc.GetJSObject()

ojs.Saveas("/c/test.xml", "com.adobe.acrobat.xml-1-00")



End If

odoc.Close()

oapp.Exit()



here's the code in vb.net but i'm getting security error in acrobat professional please help me out

[#11]

Hi Asish,



I was struggling with this security error for a copule of days myself! For some security reasons (That I do not remeber) you are not allowed to save the converted document in the root directory. change your path from "/c/test.xml" to simething like "/c/test/text.xml" and it should work all right.



Good luck

Arash

[#12]

hi

i too having the same issue as converting PDF file to XML format/file. this should be done using pure java code and till now i got the pdf file name by selecting the file using the choose file browser and storing it in a variable then with the help of PDFBOX i tried but the result is converted but not in XML format(i.e.,when i open the converted XML file it is in normal format but only the extension has been changed .PDF to .XML no other changed)so please let me know how to achive this

i have paste the code i have used



import java.io.File;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;

import java.io.Writer;

import java.net.MalformedURLException;

import java.net.URL;



import org.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;

import org.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.AccessPermission;

import org.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.StandardDecryptionMaterial;

import org.pdfbox.util.PDFText2HTML;

//import org.pdfbox.util.PDFTextStripper;

import org.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDFont.* ;

import org.pdfbox.util.PDFTextStripper;

import org.pdfbox.util.*;

import org.pdfbox.pdmodel.*;

import com.activegrid.util.AGObject;

//import executesqljavaxsd.types.*;

import com.activegrid.util.Logger;

import com.activegrid.data.DataService;

import java.util.List;

import java.util.ArrayList;



public class pdf2xml {

public static final String DEFAULT_ENCODING =

null;

//"ISO-8859-1";

//"ISO-8859-6"; //arabic

//"US-ASCII";

//"UTF-8";

//"UTF-16";

//"UTF-16BE";

//"UTF-16LE";



private static final String PASSWORD = "-password";

private static final String ENCODING = "-encoding";

private static final String CONSOLE = "-console";

private static final String START_PAGE = "-startPage";

private static final String END_PAGE = "-endPage";

private static final String SORT = "-sort";

private static final String HTML = "-html"; // jjb - added simple HTML output

private static String a;

public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception

{



}

public static void abc(String inp)throws Exception

{

boolean toConsole = false;

boolean toHTML = false;

boolean sort = false;

String password = "";

String encoding = DEFAULT_ENCODING;

String pdfFile = inp;

String textFile = "C:/tut.xml";//file to store in XML format

int startPage = 1;

int endPage = Integer.MAX_VALUE;

a ="txt";

if( pdfFile == null )

{

usage();

}

else

{



Writer output = null;

PDDocument document = null;

try

{

try

{

//basically try to load it from a url first and if the URL

//is not recognized then try to load it from the file system.

URL url = new URL( pdfFile );

document = PDDocument.load( url );

String fileName = url.getFile();

if( textFile == null && fileName.length() >4 )

{

File outputFile =

new File( fileName.substring( 0, fileName.length() -4 ) + ".txt" );

textFile = outputFile.getName();

}

}

catch( MalformedURLException e )

{

document = PDDocument.load( pdfFile );

if( textFile == null && pdfFile.length() >4 )

{

textFile = pdfFile.substring( 0, pdfFile.length() -4 ) + ".txt";

}

}



//document.print();

if( document.isEncrypted() )

{

StandardDecryptionMaterial sdm = new StandardDecryptionMaterial( password );

document.openProtection( sdm );

AccessPermission ap = document.getCurrentAccessPermission();



if( ! ap.canExtractContent() )

{

throw new IOException( "You do not have permission to extract text" );

}

}

if( toConsole )

{

output = new OutputStreamWriter( System.out );

}

else

{

if( encoding != null )

{

output = new OutputStreamWriter(

new FileOutputStream( textFile ), encoding );

}

else

{

//use default encoding

output = new OutputStreamWriter(

new FileOutputStream( textFile ) );

}

}



PDFTextStripper stripper = null;

if(toHTML)

{

stripper = new PDFText2HTML();

}

else

{

stripper = new PDFTextStripper();

}

stripper.setSortByPosition( sort );

stripper.setStartPage( startPage );

stripper.setEndPage( endPage );

stripper.writeText( document, output );

}

finally

{

if( output != null )

{

output.close();

}

if( document != null )

{

document.close();

}

}

}

}

/**

* This will print the usage requirements and exit.

*/

private static void usage()

{

System.err.println( "Usage: java org.pdfbox.ExtractText [OPTIONS] <PDF file> [Text File]\n" +

" -password <password> Password to decrypt document\n" +

" -encoding <output encoding> (ISO-8859-1,UTF-16BE,UTF-16LE,...)\n" +

" -console Send text to console instead of file\n" +

" -html Output in HTML format instead of raw text\n" +

" -sort Sort the text before writing\n" +

" -startPage <number> The first page to start extraction(1 based)\n" +

" -endPage <number> The last page to extract(inclusive)\n" +

" <PDF file> The PDF document to use\n" +

" [Text File] The file to write the text to\n"

);

System.exit( 1 );

}

public static java.lang.String pdf2xml(java.lang.String inp) {

try{

abc(inp);

}

catch( Exception e){}

a = inp;

java.lang.String out = a;



// your custom code goes here



return out;

}



}



reply me ASAP

regards

yuvaraj

[#13]

You should post this question in PDFBOX forum.

[#14]

How to convert a pdf document into xml file format... Help me with codings... I am in need of it.. Pls help me

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

We can get the XML data out of a PDF, but we can't convert the PDF to XML.



Jasmin

[#16]

How do I get the XML data out of a PDF?

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

Using the LiveCycle Form Data Integration's Export data or LiveCycle Form's processFormSubmission.



Jasmin

[Jasmin_Charbonn]

I just want to rectify something I said in a post earlier:



"...but we can't convert the PDF to XML"



We actually CAN convert PDF to XML using ExportPDF( ) and ExportPDF2( ) operations in GeneratePDF service.



Sorry for the confusion.



Jasmin