Has anyone used PDFBox to extract data from a PDF form?

[Ge...@ao.uscourts.gov]

If so, would you mind sharing an example?

Re: Has anyone used PDFBox to extract data from a PDF form?

[Tilman Hausherr <TH...@t-online.de>]

Am 09.10.2014 um 20:59 schrieb George_Jordan@ao.uscourts.gov:
> If so, would you mind sharing an example?

Get the source code, e.g. from
http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/apache//pdfbox/1.8.7/pdfbox-1.8.7-src.zip

then get the file PrintFields.java




/*
  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
  * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
  * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
  * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
  * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
  *
  *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  *
  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  * limitations under the License.
  */
package org.apache.pdfbox.examples.fdf;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.pdfbox.exceptions.CryptographyException;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocumentCatalog;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.common.COSObjectable;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDAcroForm;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDField;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDSignatureField;

/**
  * This example will take a PDF document and print all the fields from 
the file.
  *
  * @author <a href="mailto:ben@benlitchfield.com">Ben Litchfield</a>
  *
  */
public class PrintFields
{

     /**
      * This will print all the fields from the document.
      *
      * @param pdfDocument The PDF to get the fields from.
      *
      * @throws IOException If there is an error getting the fields.
      */
     public void printFields(PDDocument pdfDocument) throws IOException
     {
         PDDocumentCatalog docCatalog = pdfDocument.getDocumentCatalog();
         PDAcroForm acroForm = docCatalog.getAcroForm();
         List fields = acroForm.getFields();
         Iterator fieldsIter = fields.iterator();

         System.out.println(new Integer(fields.size()).toString() + " 
top-level fields were found on the form");

         while (fieldsIter.hasNext())
         {
             PDField field = (PDField) fieldsIter.next();
             processField(field, "|--", field.getPartialName());
         }
     }

     private void processField(PDField field, String sLevel, String 
sParent) throws IOException
     {
         List<COSObjectable> kids = field.getKids();
         String partialName = field.getPartialName();
         if (kids != null)
         {
             Iterator<COSObjectable> kidsIter = kids.iterator();
             if (!sParent.equals(partialName))
             {
                 if (partialName != null)
                 {
                     sParent = sParent + "." + partialName;
                 }
             }
             System.out.println(sLevel + sParent);
             while (kidsIter.hasNext())
             {
                 Object pdfObj = kidsIter.next();
                 if (pdfObj instanceof PDField)
                 {
                     PDField kid = (PDField) pdfObj;
                     processField(kid, "|  " + sLevel, sParent);
                 }
             }
         }
         else
         {
             String fieldValue = null;
             if (field instanceof PDSignatureField)
             {
                 // PDSignature doesn't have a value
                 fieldValue = "PDSignatureField";
             }
             else
             {
                 if (field.getValue() != null)
                 {
                     fieldValue = field.getValue();
                 }
                 else
                 {
                     fieldValue = "no value available";
                 }
             }
             StringBuilder outputString = new StringBuilder(sLevel + 
sParent);
             if (partialName != null)
             {
                 outputString.append( "." + partialName);
             }
             outputString.append(" = " + fieldValue);
             outputString.append(",  type=" + field.getClass().getName());
             System.out.println(outputString);
         }
     }

     /**
      * This will read a PDF file and print out the form elements. <br />
      * see usage() for commandline
      *
      * @param args command line arguments
      *
      * @throws IOException If there is an error importing the FDF document.
      * @throws CryptographyException If there is an error decrypting 
the document.
      */
     public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, 
CryptographyException
     {
         PDDocument pdf = null;
         try
         {
             if (args.length != 1)
             {
                 usage();
             }
             else
             {
                 pdf = PDDocument.load(args[0]);
                 PrintFields exporter = new PrintFields();
                 if (pdf.isEncrypted())
                 {
                     pdf.decrypt("");
                 }
                 exporter.printFields(pdf);
             }
         }
         finally
         {
             if (pdf != null)
             {
                 pdf.close();
             }
         }
     }

     /**
      * This will print out a message telling how to use this example.
      */
     private static void usage()
     {
         System.err.println("usage: 
org.apache.pdfbox.examples.fdf.PrintFields <pdf-file>");
     }
}