Search PDF contents for ISBN number and save to text file

Question

Hi,
Hoping someone can help me create a script that can find the ISBN inside of a PDF and write that filename and number to a text file.
I've found a way to do this using java using and document processing in Acrobat but I need to do it by pointing at a folder of files.
Format desired would be:
original filename.pdf, isbn#
Any help is appreciated,
John

Answer 1

you could give the command line tool ps2ascii a try. It also works with pdf and you could  pipe it's output (pure text) to a nice perl/ruby/grep/sed/awk 1-liner to extract the isbn numbers (still have to read a book about Regular Expression ;-) )
I did a quick & dirty version, but I think you will have to install ps2ascii first. I don't remember but I think it was installed with ghostscript (using macports)
--30.04.2011 hubionmac.com
--quick & dirty script to extract first ISBN-Number of a PDF file... just uses grep, maybe some nice reqexp would do a better job!
set myselection to choose file of type {"pdf"} with multiple selections allowed
set myoutput to ""
repeat with pdf_file in myselection
tell application "Finder" to set pdfname to name of (pdf_file as alias)
set pdf_file_posix to quoted form of POSIX path of (pdf_file as alias)
do shell script ""
try
--first add the path, otherwhise s2ascii will fail since it cannot find ghostscript (gs) which is also installed in /usr/local/bin (think by macports)
set ISBN_String to do shell script "PATH=\"$PATH:/usr/local/bin\"; /usr/local/bin/ps2ascii " & pdf_file_posix & " | grep -m 1 ISBN"
set foundLine to true
on error
display dialog "maybe \"" & pdfname & "\" does not contain a ISBN at all"
set foundLine to false
end try
if foundLine is true then
repeat with s in every word of ISBN_String
try
get s as integer
set s to s as text
set foundisbn to true
exit repeat
on error
set s to ""
end try
end repeat
end if
set myoutput to myoutput & pdfname & tab & s & return
end repeat
tell application "TextEdit"
activate
set a to make new document
set text of a to myoutput as text
end tell