iText in Action 2nd Edition

The ExtractPageContentArea example is part of the book iText in Action (ISBN 9781935182610).

It's a small standalone application. You can use this example for inspiration, but please buy the book if there's something you don't understand about the example. Read Chapter 15 for more info.

Chapter 15: Page content and structure

Keywords for this example: Existing PDFs, Parsing PDF, PdfReader, TextExtractionStrategy, Parsing PDF > extracting text

If you want this example to work, you need the following jars: iText.jar

This example uses the following resources: preface.pdf.

part4.chapter15.ExtractPageContentArea

If you compile and execute this example, you'll get the following result:

preface_clipped.txt

You can download the full source code of ExtractPageContentArea, or read it here:

/*
 * This class is part of the book "iText in Action - 2nd Edition"
 * written by Bruno Lowagie (ISBN: 9781935182610)
 * For more info, go to: http://itextpdf.com/examples/
 * This example only works with the AGPL version of iText.
 */
 
package part4.chapter15;
 
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
 
import com.itextpdf.text.DocumentException;
import com.itextpdf.text.Rectangle;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.FilteredTextRenderListener;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.LocationTextExtractionStrategy;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.PdfTextExtractor;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.RegionTextRenderFilter;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.RenderFilter;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.TextExtractionStrategy;
 
public class ExtractPageContentArea {
 
    /** The original PDF that will be parsed. */
    public static final String PREFACE = "resources/pdfs/preface.pdf";
    /** The resulting text file. */
    public static final String RESULT = "results/part4/chapter15/preface_clipped.txt";
 
    /**
     * Parses a specific area of a PDF to a plain text file.
     * @param pdf the original PDF
     * @param txt the resulting text
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public void parsePdf(String pdf, String txt) throws IOException {
        PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(pdf);
        PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(txt));
        Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(70, 80, 490, 580);
        RenderFilter filter = new RegionTextRenderFilter(rect);
        TextExtractionStrategy strategy;
        for (int i = 1; i <= reader.getNumberOfPages(); i++) {
            strategy = new FilteredTextRenderListener(new LocationTextExtractionStrategy(), filter);
            out.println(PdfTextExtractor.getTextFromPage(reader, i, strategy));
        }
        out.flush();
        out.close();
        reader.close();
    }
 
    /**
     * Main method.
     * @param    args    no arguments needed
     * @throws DocumentException 
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, DocumentException {
        new ExtractPageContentArea().parsePdf(PREFACE, RESULT);
    }
}