How to search a PDF file in Java (Tutorial)

This tutorial shows you how to find words in a PDF file in simple steps using JPedal Java PDF library. JPedal includes a PDF search engine which provides an easy to use Java PDF api to find words and phrases in a pdf document.

How to search PDF file in Java

1. Download JPedal trial jar.
2. Create a File handle, InputStream or URL pointing to the PDF file
3. Include a password if file password protected
4. Open the PDF file
5. Scan the pages
6. Close the PDF file

and the Java code to search a PDF…

File file = new File("/path/to/document.pdf"));

FindTextInRectangle extract=new FindTextInRectangle(file);

//extract.setPassword("password");


if (extract.openPDFFile()) {

  int pageCount = extract.getPageCount();

  for (int page = 1; page <= pageCount; page++) {

    float[] coords = extract.findTextOnPage(page"textToFind",

          SearchType.MUTLI_LINE_RESULTS ) ;

  }

}

extract.closePDFfile();

Why can’t I just search the PDF file directly?

You cannot simply search inside a PDF file because the text data is stored in a special binary format.

Related tutorials

If you are looking to search PDF files in JPedal, we recommend you start with this tutorials:-

• How to Find Text in a PDF File using Java

Viewer viewer = new Viewer();
viewer.setupViewer();
viewer.executeCommand(ViewerCommands.OPENFILE, "pdfFile.pdf");

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractTextAsWordList.writeAllWordlistsToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", -1);

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ArrayList resultsForPages = FindTextInRectangle.findTextOnAllPages("/path/to/file.pdf", "textToFind");

PrintPdfPages print = new PrintPdfPages("C:/pdfs/mypdf.pdf");

if (print.openPDFFile()) {
    print.printAllPages("Printer Name");
}

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});