Searching the web using pdf

Question

In my newsletter I want to insert a search-form in order to search among my html documents in my site. How can I add such a form? PS: I don't want "Google searching of pdf documents", I want MY PDF searching the web! thank you

Answer 1

I think the mechanism is called 'Acroforms' (They may have changed the name though)

This Doc, gives some details of the API:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpartners.adobe.com%2Fpublic%2Fdeveloper%2Fen%2Facrobat%2Fsdk%2FFormsAPIReference.pdf&rct=j&q=Acroforms+&ei=RPFqS4fEHYfk8Qalpon8BQ&usg=AFQjCNH_DDuR6xxm8KJ0a6ZG4S-8XRa0VA

Not sure if you need 'Distiller' or something like this to create these though...

Answer 2

As far as i understood, you have newsletter sent to clients, where you want input for search form that would find pdf documents on your site.

First part is easy - form that would lead to your site. Like

<form action='http://yoursite.com/some_pdf_search_action/'>
<input type='text' name='q' />
<input type='submit' />
</form>

Second part requires previous pdf indexing. Doint it on server is rather complex. Read pdflib solution for php at http://php.net/manual/bg/ref.pdf.php (search for "pdf2text"). Will require additional packages to be installed.

After that its a matter of indexing pdf as text, storing it in database and searching it either with natural LIKE syntax or boolean. Or if you have too many documents - using lucene or sphinx