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Home » Newsletter » August 2008

By Mohammed Najeemudheen and Suraj C. B.

Important

With the release of Version 4 of PDFtoolkit, form field processing has got simpler. PDF-to-image conversion is much more simpler. A special article titled "Form Fields Creation and Processing Using PDFtoolkit v4" has been written for users of Version 4. This article has been left here for users of older versions of PDFtoolkit.

Last month in our series, we saw how to perform some basic tasks in meeting everyday PDF-related needs.

This month, we will see how to:

1. Extracting text from a PDF document:

   function ExtractText(
             APageNo: Integer): TStringList;
   function ExtractTextFormatted(
             APageNo: Integer): TStringList; 
   

   This method extracts text from a specified page and returns the text in a TStringList.

   PDFDoc: TgtPDFDocument;
   LStrList: TStringList;
   
   edExtPageno: TEdit;
   edExtTxtFileName: TEdit;
   edExtPageno: TEdit;
   rbExtTxt: TRadioButton;
   ...
   PDFDoc.LoadFromFile('input_file.pdf')
   ...
   
   if PDFDoc.IsLoaded then
    begin
     try
      LStrList := TStringList.Create;
      if rbExtTxt.Checked then
       // Extracts text without worrying about formatting
       LStrList := 
         PDFDoc.ExtractText((edExtPageno.Text))
      else
       // Extracts text with whatever formatting is possible
       LStrList := 
          PDFDoc.ExtractTextFormatted(
             StrToInt(edExtPageno.Text));
       LStrList.SaveToFile(edExtTxtFileName.Text);
     finally
      LStrList.Free;
     end;
   end;
   

   
   
2. Fill a form field: If you know the name of a form field, you can change its value by using the method:

   procedure SetFormFieldValue(FieldName: string; 
                               Value: string);
   

   Specify the field name and the new value, and its done.

   edEditFormFieldName: TEdit;
   edNewValue: TEdit;
   ...
   if PDFDoc.IsLoaded then
    begin
     PDFDoc.SetFormFieldValue(
               edEditFormFieldName.Text,
               edNewValue.Text);
    end;
   SaveDocument;
   

3. Embedding A File Attachment: First create an object of TgtPDFFileAttachment, specify the file that needs to be attached, specify the file name for the attachment in the PDF, location where the attachment icon will be, type of the icon used for the attachment, and call the method:

   procedure InsertFileAttachment(
      AFile: TgtPDFFileAttachment; 
      PageNumber: Integer); 
   
   property FileAttachmentIcon: TgtFileAttachmentIcon 
      read FFileAttachmentIcon 
      write FFileAttachmentIcon;
   
   TgtFileAttachmentIcon = 
      (faGraph, faPaperclip, faPushPin, faTag); 
   

   Here is the code:

   LFileAttach: TgtPDFFileAttachment;
   edAttachment: TEdit;
   edAttachmentName: TEdit;
   edAttachPageno: TEdit;
   
   ...
   try
    LFileAttach := TgtPDFFileAttachment.Create;
    // pathname of the attachment in the file system
    LFileAttach.FileName := edAttachment.Text;
    // name of the attachment in the document
    LFileAttach.AttachmentName := edAttachmentName.Text;
    // location of the attachment icon
    LFileAttach.SetBounds(50,50,300,300);
    // type of the attachment icon
    LFileAttach.FileAttachmentIcon := faGraph;
    // Insert the attachment
    PDFDoc.InsertFileAttachment(
        LFileAttach,
        StrToInt(edAttachPageno.Text));
   
    SaveDocument;
   finally
    LFileAttach.Free;
   end; 
   

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