itextsharp PDF to text dump - itext

Question

I am looking for a way to actually get the contents of the file itself, in its text format, dumped. E.g.: i don't want a dictionary object, i don't want some sort of extractionstrategy option, i just want the same text document that itextsharp uses to parse... the WHOLE thing as a string or stringbuilder...
I have not yet found a way to do this using any tools what so ever... my problem is that i am trying to read a dynamic PDF into a C# application... and we all know that those darn dynamic PDFs can't be parsed by iTextSharp (AcroForm and AcroFields always comes up empty), so i figured that if i can get the actual text dump of the entire file, i can see what it looks like and parse it myself for this specific task (e.g.: make a class for each document i know i can received, and make a map there based on what i see).
If anyone can help me do that, or even better, find a way, in C#, to extract the XML Source for the PDF (kinda like clicking the XML Source tab in LiveCycle) instead, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Matt

Answer 1

If you are looking for the actual operators and commands of each page in the raw text format, try the following code:
var reader = new PdfReader("test.pdf");
int intPageNum = reader.NumberOfPages;
for (int i = 1; i <= intPageNum; i++)
{
byte[] contentBytes = reader.GetPageContent(i);
File.WriteAllBytes("page-" + i + ".txt", contentBytes);
}
reader.Close();

Answer 2

I am looking for a way to actually get the contents of the file
itself, in its text format, dumped. E.g.: i don't want a dictionary
object, i don't want some sort of extractionstrategy option, i just
want the same text document that itextsharp uses to parse... the WHOLE
thing as a string or stringbuilder...
Unfortunately the data that itextsharp uses to parse are not yet text; the operators in that data are given in some textual format but the actual glyphs may be given in a completely arbitrary ad-hoc encoding. That been said, often some standard encoding is used as it is the most simple solution for the components in use. You cannot in general count on that, though. The answer by VahidN shows you how to access the starting points for that content; not seldomly, though, that page content data he extracts only contain references to resources which are contained in different objects.
my problem is that i am trying to read a dynamic PDF into a C#
application... and we all know that those darn dynamic PDFs can't be
parsed by iTextSharp (AcroForm and AcroFields always comes up empty),
This sounds as if you actually have a completely different task at hand. Dynamic forms and their contents are not part of the page content but instead stored in a separate XML Forms Architecture stream.
iText in Action, 2nd edition, in chapter 8 gives you some information on how to access the XFA stream data, for a first glimps look at the sample XfaMovie.cs.
You might also want to look at the iText XML Worker project for easier manipulation of XFA streams.

Answer 3

if you just want to dump the text, try this:
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(pdfFileName);
String text = "";
nPages = reader.NumberOfPages;
for (int i = 0; i < nPages; i++)
{
text += PdfTextExtractor.GetTextFromPage(reader, i + 1);
}