Read pdf files with php

Question

I have a large PDF file that is a floor map for a building. It has layers for all the office furniture including text boxes of seat location.

My goal is to read this file with PHP, search the document for text layers, get their contents and coordinates in the file. This way I can map out seat locations -> x/y coordinates.

Is there any way to do this via PHP? (Or even Ruby or Python if that's what's necessary)

Answer 1

Hmm ... not exactly php, but you could call a program from php to convert the pdf to a temporary html file and then parse the resulting file with php. I've done something similar for a project of mine and this is the program I used:

PdfToHtml

What's cool about the program is that it will spit out the text elements in < div > tags with absolute position coordinates. It seems like this is exactly what you are trying to do.

Answer 2

Check out FPDF (with FPDI):

http://www.fpdf.org/

http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/

These will let you open an pdf and add content to it in PHP. I'm guessing you can also use their functionality to search through the existing content for the values you need.

Another possible library is TCPDF: http://www.tecnick.com/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=tcpdf

Answer 3

FPDF works quite well for me. Based on the decription I could do it in FPDF using PHP.