Extracting text from PDF : PDFLib vs PDF extract vs pdf2xml

Question

Hi there,

I am looking for a library (if possible available in Java or PHP) in order to extract text from a PDF. There is a lot of software available, including:

• 3-Heights™ PDF Extract http://www.pdf-tools.com/pdf/pdf-extract-content-metadata-text.aspx

• PDFlib TET – Text Extraction Toolkit http://www.pdflib.com/products/tet/

• PDF2XML http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdf2xml/

Which tools would you choose? What do you think of them? Do you know of other tools to convert XML to PDF or text?

Thank you very much for your kind help!

Answer 1

My favourite is iText (java) but extracting text from a PDF can be fraught with difficulties as the text in the PDF is not alway stored in the order in which it appears.