how to convert PDF into HTML using C#

Question

i have to read pdf and create html document... for uploaded cv in my site... i can not use any shareware. please can anybody suggest me the best solution for converting pdf to html... or read pdf content using C#

site is developed in C#, asp.net 3.5

Answer 1

You could use something like pdftotext as outlined in the following article: How To Convert Pdf file to text in asp.net

Answer 2

Depends on what you want to do. Converting pdfs to plain text without formatting can be done with pdftotext or similar solutions. Converting PDF layout to HTML layout is very hard because the PDF design philosophy is very different from how HTML layouting works. Google has some sort of solution for it but it will usually break layout.

Regarding your CV concept: As CV layout is highly important for customers using a site I would not want to auto-convert PDF CVs to HTML CVs. What pdftotext can offer you is a plain text where a CV search engine can find parts of the CV.

Answer 3

you may convert pdf to image with ghostscript and c# and then publish image on site. for details see this article

Answer 4

i got one code from here

and downlaoded itextsharp dll

and this code worked fine... only one problem i faced... that my most of files are converted into text or html or whatever frmat i want... but only 1 file i am not able to convert... if anybody can use this code and help me to find out what is the proble... i'll be thankful to him/her.

you can see code here...

using System;
using System.IO;
using iTextSharp.text.pdf;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace PDFReader
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Parses a PDF file and extracts the text from it.
    /// </summary>
    public class PDFParser
    {
        /// BT = Beginning of a text object operator 
        /// ET = End of a text object operator
        /// Td move to the start of next line
        ///  5 Ts = superscript
        /// -5 Ts = subscript

        #region Fields

        #region _numberOfCharsToKeep
        /// <summary>
        /// The number of characters to keep, when extracting text.
        /// </summary>
        private static int _numberOfCharsToKeep = 15;
        #endregion

        #endregion

        #region ExtractText
        /// <summary>
        /// Extracts a text from a PDF file.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="inFileName">the full path to the pdf file.</param>
        /// <param name="outFileName">the output file name.</param>
        /// <returns>the extracted text</returns>
        public bool ExtractText(string inFileName, string outFileName)
        {
            StreamWriter outFile = null;
            try
            {
                // Create a reader for the given PDF file
                PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(inFileName);
                //outFile = File.CreateText(outFileName);
                outFile = new StreamWriter(outFileName, false, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);

                Console.Write("Processing: ");

                int totalLen = 68;
                float charUnit = ((float)totalLen) / (float)reader.NumberOfPages;
                int totalWritten = 0;
                float curUnit = 0;

                for (int page = 1; page <= reader.NumberOfPages; page++)
                {
                    outFile.Write(ExtractTextFromPDFBytes(reader.GetPageContent(page)) + " ");

                    // Write the progress.
                    if (charUnit >= 1.0f)
                    {
                        for (int i = 0; i < (int)charUnit; i++)
                        {
                            Console.Write("#");
                            totalWritten++;
                        }
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        curUnit += charUnit;
                        if (curUnit >= 1.0f)
                        {
                            for (int i = 0; i < (int)curUnit; i++)
                            {
                                Console.Write("#");
                                totalWritten++;
                            }
                            curUnit = 0;
                        }

                    }
                }

                if (totalWritten < totalLen)
                {
                    for (int i = 0; i < (totalLen - totalWritten); i++)
                    {
                        Console.Write("#");
                    }
                }
                return true;
            }
            catch
            {
                return false;
            }
            finally
            {
                if (outFile != null) outFile.Close();
            }
        }
        #endregion

        #region ExtractTextFromPDFBytes
        /// <summary>
        /// This method processes an uncompressed Adobe (text) object 
        /// and extracts text.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="input">uncompressed</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public string ExtractTextFromPDFBytes(byte[] input)
        {
            if (input == null || input.Length == 0) return "";

            try
            {
                string resultString = "";

                // Flag showing if we are we currently inside a text object
                bool inTextObject = false;

                // Flag showing if the next character is literal 
                // e.g. '\\' to get a '\' character or '\(' to get '('
                bool nextLiteral = false;

                // () Bracket nesting level. Text appears inside ()
                int bracketDepth = 0;

                // Keep previous chars to get extract numbers etc.:
                char[] previousCharacters = new char[_numberOfCharsToKeep];
                for (int j = 0; j < _numberOfCharsToKeep; j++) previousCharacters[j] = ' ';


                for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
                {
                    char c = (char)input[i];
                    if (input[i] == 213)
                        c = "'".ToCharArray()[0];

                    if (inTextObject)
                    {
                        // Position the text
                        if (bracketDepth == 0)
                        {
                            if (CheckToken(new string[] { "TD", "Td" }, previousCharacters))
                            {
                                resultString += "\n\r";
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                if (CheckToken(new string[] { "'", "T*", "\"" }, previousCharacters))
                                {
                                    resultString += "\n";
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    if (CheckToken(new string[] { "Tj" }, previousCharacters))
                                    {
                                        resultString += " ";
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                        }

                        // End of a text object, also go to a new line.
                        if (bracketDepth == 0 &&
                            CheckToken(new string[] { "ET" }, previousCharacters))
                        {

                            inTextObject = false;
                            resultString += " ";
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            // Start outputting text
                            if ((c == '(') && (bracketDepth == 0) && (!nextLiteral))
                            {
                                bracketDepth = 1;
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                // Stop outputting text
                                if ((c == ')') && (bracketDepth == 1) && (!nextLiteral))
                                {
                                    bracketDepth = 0;
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    // Just a normal text character:
                                    if (bracketDepth == 1)
                                    {
                                        // Only print out next character no matter what. 
                                        // Do not interpret.
                                        if (c == '\\' && !nextLiteral)
                                        {
                                            resultString += c.ToString();
                                            nextLiteral = true;
                                        }
                                        else
                                        {
                                            if (((c >= ' ') && (c <= '~')) ||
                                                ((c >= 128) && (c < 255)))
                                            {
                                                resultString += c.ToString();
                                            }

                                            nextLiteral = false;
                                        }
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }

                    // Store the recent characters for 
                    // when we have to go back for a checking
                    for (int j = 0; j < _numberOfCharsToKeep - 1; j++)
                    {
                        previousCharacters[j] = previousCharacters[j + 1];
                    }
                    previousCharacters[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 1] = c;

                    // Start of a text object
                    if (!inTextObject && CheckToken(new string[] { "BT" }, previousCharacters))
                    {
                        inTextObject = true;
                    }
                }

                return CleanupContent(resultString);
            }
            catch
            {
                return "";
            }
        }

        private string CleanupContent(string text)
        {
            string[] patterns = { @"\\\(", @"\\\)", @"\\226", @"\\222", @"\\223", @"\\224", @"\\340", @"\\342", @"\\344", @"\\300", @"\\302", @"\\304", @"\\351", @"\\350", @"\\352", @"\\353", @"\\311", @"\\310", @"\\312", @"\\313", @"\\362", @"\\364", @"\\366", @"\\322", @"\\324", @"\\326", @"\\354", @"\\356", @"\\357", @"\\314", @"\\316", @"\\317", @"\\347", @"\\307", @"\\371", @"\\373", @"\\374", @"\\331", @"\\333", @"\\334", @"\\256", @"\\231", @"\\253", @"\\273", @"\\251", @"\\221" };
            string[] replace = { "(", ")", "-", "'", "\"", "\"", "à", "â", "ä", "À", "Â", "Ä", "é", "è", "ê", "ë", "É", "È", "Ê", "Ë", "ò", "ô", "ö", "Ò", "Ô", "Ö", "ì", "î", "ï", "Ì", "Î", "Ï", "ç", "Ç", "ù", "û", "ü", "Ù", "Û", "Ü", "®", "™", "«", "»", "©", "'" };

            for (int i = 0; i < patterns.Length; i++)
            {
                string regExPattern = patterns[i];
                Regex regex = new Regex(regExPattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
                text = regex.Replace(text, replace[i]);
            }

            return text;
        }

        #endregion

        #region CheckToken
        /// <summary>
        /// Check if a certain 2 character token just came along (e.g. BT)
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="tokens">the searched token</param>
        /// <param name="recent">the recent character array</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private bool CheckToken(string[] tokens, char[] recent)
        {
            try
            {
                foreach (string token in tokens)
                {
                    if ((recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 3] == token[0]) &&
                        (recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 2] == token[1]) &&
                        ((recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 1] == ' ') ||
                        (recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 1] == 0x0d) ||
                        (recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 1] == 0x0a)) &&
                        ((recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 4] == ' ') ||
                        (recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 4] == 0x0d) ||
                        (recent[_numberOfCharsToKeep - 4] == 0x0a))
                        )
                    {
                        return true;
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
              return true;
            }
            return false;
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

i am getting error "Index out of range" in function

CheckToken