All the modules mentioned are for creating, manipulating, and adding to PDFs. What you'll probably want to do is use pdf2ps to convert the PDF into Postscript. Then you should be able to parse for the text. However, if the text is actually an image in the PDF this won't work either. Then you'd need some kind of OCR software.
<br><br>I've had pretty good luck with this method when I needed to modify a PDF that I didn't create myself. Convert to ps, modify it with any text editor, convert it back to PDF. Almost always ends up exactly like the original except for my change.
<br><br>There's also pdftotext (part of Xpdf), but I haven't used it. I've needed to maintain the original PDF, this looks like it just extracts any text in a PDF.<br><br>Good luck, but since this is from March 30, I hope that you figured out a way to do what you needed already.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/3/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">tiger peng</b> <<a href="mailto:tigerpeng2001@yahoo.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">tigerpeng2001@yahoo.com
</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Have you figured out how to look for a specific string? I have just skimmed through PDF::Parser, PDF::Extract and PDF::Xtract without finding any good clues.
<br><br>Ge<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Jay Strauss <<a href="mailto:me@heyjay.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
me@heyjay.com</a>><br>To: <a href="http://Chicago.pm" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Chicago.pm</a> chatter <<a href="mailto:chicago-talk@pm.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
chicago-talk@pm.org</a>><br>Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 5:29:01 PM<br>Subject: [Chicago-talk] Locating text in a PDF<br><br><div>Once I have opened a PDF using PDF::API2<br><br>How would I examine the text on a page looking for a specific string?
<br><br>Thanks<br>Jay<br>_______________________________________________<br>Chicago-talk mailing
list<br><a href="mailto:Chicago-talk@pm.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Chicago-talk@pm.org</a><br><a href="http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk</a><br></div></div><br></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>Chicago-talk mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Chicago-talk@pm.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Chicago-talk@pm.org</a><br><a href="http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk</a><br></blockquote>
</div><br>