I need to convert pdf files to text in a Foxpro (v 9.0) application and would like to have suggestions on how to do this.
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Completely agree with Olaf. I have a vast amount of experience with Visual FoxPro and there is no built in tool to convert a PDF into text. You will need to use a third party software to accomplish this.
I have used this tool in the past and it seem to work well: http://www.pdftodocconvert
As far as I can see from the links neither of the suggested 3rd party tools are intended for development. I would need something that I can call from a COM interface or similar, e.g. like Dynazip for zip files. My problem is that I haven't found it. An alternative might be to automate Acrobat, but also hear I have reached a dead end...
xpdf from http://gnuwin32.sourceforg
Why do you insist on COM interoperation? If such tools offer a commandline you can RUN converter.EXE -<<commandlineswitches>> to automate conversion.
For example see http://www.a-pdf.com/text/
RUN "C:\Program Files\A-ÜDF...\PTCMD.exe" "d:\pdfs\some.pdf" "d\txts\some.txt"
Bye, Olaf.
OK - I understand that ShellExecute can be used. However I still prefer a COM interface. I think it gives better programmatic control than RUN / Shellexec. I regard RUN / Shellexec as a work-around, and will use it if COM inteop is not successful. Thanx for your assistance - it has been helpful.
/Krister
Ok, I understand that you rather want control and perhaps also a return value instead of a call to a command line tool, of which you could only check the resulting txt file.
There's one alternative to COM you should consider in general: A functional DLL you can declare functions from via DECLARE, like Win API DLLs can be used. You'll likely find something converting PDF to TXT with such an interface.
Bye, Olaf.
Yes - that could be an option. QuickPDF has both, so I can select the one I prefer. Probably I would still prefer COM, since that technique is more understandable (for me). Also I like the way you use a COM interface - create an instance, set properties, run methods - very much like normal VFP programming ;-)
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by: Olaf_DoschkePosted on 2009-11-02 at 10:07:12ID: 25721835
Surely not easy to parse a PDF document for the inner text. I'd use a third party tool, for example I found this via googling "pdf text extraction": http://www.a-pdf.com/text/
Bye, Olaf.