Search for text in PDF binary

Hello experts,
by using a SAP BI tool we generate reports in File format. SAP standard do some generating and give back an internal table with filename and file content in binary form.
Now we would like to search in this PDF binary for an special text or string to use them for changing filename.
Is there any way to do that? Every idea and hint is welcome.
Best regards,
Peter

Now we would like to search in this PDF binary for an special text or string to use them for changing filename. Is there any way to do that?
Based on your posting it sounds a bit like you're doing ABAP processing. However, I'll ignore that for now and just say that in the Java environment I have had good experience with the Java Library [iText PDF|http://itextpdf.com/]. I'm not sure what SAP offers in that area, but they must have something, because [TREX|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/a4/929d4206b70931e10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm] "understands" PDF (though that doesn't mean that you have a nice API for parsing PDFs).
You probably investigated this already, but I'd take a look at possibilities to hook in before (or at the time) the PDF gets generated (might be easier to craft and export a filename there). Thanks to the [enhancement framework|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/en/94/9cdc40132a8531e10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm] you usually have quite a few ways to get things done...
Note that even if you're able to read a PDF, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can parse it the way you want. A silly example would be scanned pages, where the page is stored as an image and at best the scanner software runs some OCR (with possibly buggy results) to provide capabilities for searching the PDF. In your case that's probably not an issue, but still the question might be if the information you're looking at is structured enough to get it back...
Cheers, harald

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Search for text in PDF by VBA with only Adobe Reader installed

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which, as I understand, works only with a certain level of Adobe Acrobat being installed.
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Bying this number of Adobe Acrobat licenses for just this purpose would be a heavy overkill which I just can't afford.
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Now we would like to search in this PDF binary for an special text or string to use them for changing filename. Is there any way to do that?
Based on your posting it sounds a bit like you're doing ABAP processing. However, I'll ignore that for now and just say that in the Java environment I have had good experience with the Java Library [iText PDF|http://itextpdf.com/]. I'm not sure what SAP offers in that area, but they must have something, because [TREX|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/a4/929d4206b70931e10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm] "understands" PDF (though that doesn't mean that you have a nice API for parsing PDFs).
You probably investigated this already, but I'd take a look at possibilities to hook in before (or at the time) the PDF gets generated (might be easier to craft and export a filename there). Thanks to the [enhancement framework|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/en/94/9cdc40132a8531e10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm] you usually have quite a few ways to get things done...
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Hi, everyone...I'm hoping someone can help me out with this. I have an old MBP with Tiger installed and Preview 3.0.9. I have attempted to search for words in numerous PDF files and the search function NEVER brings up the words even when I know the words are contained in the document. I read the Preview manual and I know I'm following the correct procedures in searching for text, but nothing seems to work. Can anyone help me out with what I may be doing wrong? Thanks!

I can't picture what you could possibly be doing wrong, there's not much choice in the matter.
The only time Searching fails here is if the text in the PDF is actually only a graphic of the text.
Are these PDFs that you made? If so, what APP?
If you down load this PDF, does Search work on it?
http://web.fastermac.net/~bdaqua/TestText.pdf

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I have an 800 page pdf document to index and so far I have a script that will search for a list of keywords. But the text has large sections of code in a different font, and I think we would like to generate an index of just code examples. Is there a way to search for text of a given font in applescript? Something like
set theSel to find text theText
if the font of theSel is "Times"
write to file, etc.

Please do send a page, I might be able to spot where the font problem is coming from - but no guarantee Address is in my profile.
You asked about the script formatter. red_menace of this forum wrote the script I use. To use it, you copy the script that you want to format to the clipboard and run the formatter. This then places the marked-up text in the clipboard so that you can paste it into the forum page.
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px; height: 340px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFDDFF;
overflow: auto;">
script formatter - formats the clipboard text for forum posting
last reviewed January 19, 2009 red_menace[at]mac[dot]com
Input: text read from the clipboard
Output: formatted text copied to the clipboard
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
-- some constants and switches
property TextColor : "#000000" -- black (see http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colornames.asp)
property BackgroundColor : "#FFDDFF" -- a light plum/purple
property BorderColor : "#000000" -- black
property TheWidth : "width: 720px; " -- a width attribute (deprecated in HTML 4.01)
property UseWidth : true -- use the width attribute?
property LineCount : 25 -- the number of lines before including the height attribute
property TheHeight : "height: " & ((LineCount * 13.6) as integer) & "px; " -- a maximum height for the <pre> box
property Emphasize : false -- emphasise (bold) the script text?
property UseURL : false -- include a Script Editor message link?
property AltURL : false -- use an alternate URL encoding?
property ToolTips : {¬
"this text can be pasted into the Script Editor", ¬
"this text can be pasted into an Automator 'Run AppleScript' action", ¬
"this text can be pasted into an Automator 'Run Shell Script' action", ¬
"this text can be pasted into a HTML editor", ¬
"this text can be pasted into a text editor", ¬
"- none -"}
property TooltipDefault : {item 1 of ToolTips} -- keep track of the last tooltip used
property TempFile : "Script_Formatter_TempFile" -- a temporary work file
try
-- write the clipboard to the temporary file
set TheClipboard to (the clipboard) as text
if TheClipboard is in {"", space, tab, return} then return -- clipboard is (basically) empty
set MyOpenFile to open for access ("/tmp/" & TempFile & ".txt" as POSIX file) with write permission
set eof of MyOpenFile to 0 -- empty any previous temp file
write TheClipboard to MyOpenFile
close access MyOpenFile
if UseURL then
-- encode URL (see http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man1/pydoc.1. html)
do shell script "/usr/bin/python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of TheClipboard
-- add a link wrapper
set URLtext to "applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new&script=" & the result
if AltURL then -- use an alternate URL encoding
set URLtext to "Click here to [url=" & URLtext & "]open this script in the Script Editor[/url]: "
else -- use HTML anchor tag
set URLtext to "Click here to <a href=\"" & URLtext & "\">open this script in the Script Editor</a>: "
end if
set PromptText to ((count URLtext) as text) & " URL and "
else
set {URLtext, PromptText} to {"", ""}
end if -- UseURL
-- convert to HTML (see http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/textutil .1.html)
do shell script "cd /tmp/; /usr/bin/textutil -convert html -excludedelements '(html, head, title, body, p, span, font)' -encoding US-ASCII " & TempFile & ".txt"
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set HTMLtext to rest of paragraphs of (read ("/tmp/" & TempFile & ".html" as POSIX file))
if (count HTMLtext) is less than LineCount then -- skip the height attribute
set Height to ""
else
set Height to TheHeight
end if
set HTMLtext to FixCharacters from (HTMLtext as text) -- additional character encodings
if UseWidth then
set Width to TheWidth
else
set Width to ""
end if
if Emphasize then set HTMLtext to "" & HTMLtext & ""
set HTMLtext to "<pre style=\"
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid " & BorderColor & ";
" & Width & Height & "
color: " & TextColor & ";
background-color: " & BackgroundColor & ";
overflow: auto;\"
title=\"\">
" & HTMLtext & "</pre>
-- assemble everything on the clipboard
set TheResult to choose from list ToolTips ¬
with title "Script Formatted" with prompt PromptText & ((count HTMLtext) as text) & " HTML characters will be placed on the clipboard (plus the following ToolTip):" default items TooltipDefault OK button name "OK" cancel button name "Cancel" with empty selection allowed without multiple selections allowed
if TheResult is false then -- cancel button
error number -128
else -- add the selected title attribute (tooltip), if any
set TooltipDefault to TheResult as text
set Here to (offset of " title=" in HTMLtext) - 1
set There to (offset of ">" in HTMLtext) - 1
if TheResult is in {{}, "- none -"} then -- no tooltip
set the clipboard to URLtext & (text 1 thru (Here - 1) of HTMLtext) & (text (There + 1) thru -1 of HTMLtext)
else
set the clipboard to URLtext & (text 1 thru (Here + 9) of HTMLtext) & TheResult & (text There thru -1 of HTMLtext)
end if
end if -- TheResult is false
on error ErrorMessage number ErrorNumber
log space & (ErrorNumber as text) & ":" & tab & ErrorMessage
try
close access MyOpenFile
end try
if (ErrorNumber is -128) or (ErrorNumber is -1711) then -- nothing (user cancelled)
else
activate me
display alert "Error " & (ErrorNumber as text) message ErrorMessage as warning buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
end if
end try
to FixCharacters from TheText
fixes (converts) formatting characters used in some message forums (see http://www.asciitable.com/)
parameters - TheText [text]: the text to fix
returns [text]: the fixed text
-- this list of lists contains the characters to encode - item 1 is the character, item 2 is the HTML encoding
set TheCharacters to {¬
{"!", "!"}, ¬
{"*", "*"}, ¬
{"+", "+"}, ¬
{"-", "-"}, ¬
{"[", "["}, ¬
{"\\", "\"}, ¬
{"]", "]"}, ¬
{"^", "^"}, ¬
{"_", "_"}, ¬
{"~", "~"}}
set TempTID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
repeat with SomeCharacter in TheCharacters
if item 1 of SomeCharacter is in TheText then -- replace
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to item 1 of SomeCharacter
set the ItemList to text items of TheText
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to item 2 of SomeCharacter
set TheText to the ItemList as text
end if
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TempTID
return TheText
end FixCharacters
</pre>

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