How to extract text from a pdf file in android emulator

[Mohit G Gupta]

i have tried the following code to extract text from pdf file on android.

String path = "/Users/daniel/Temp/mypdf.pdf";
           PDFTextStripper stripper = new PDFTextStripper();
           PDDocument pdDoc = PDDocument.load(path);
           StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
           stripper.writeText(pdDoc, writer);
           System.out.println(writer.toString());

it works when the file is in the file-system,but i want it to work ,when the file is in the sdcard
something similar to this:

    File sdcard = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
        
    //Get the text file
     
    File file = new File(sdcard,"myfolder/anskey.txt");
     
    //ob.pathh
     //Read text from file
    
     StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder();
     try {
         BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
         String line=null;
         //int i=0;
         List<String> lines = new ArrayList<String>();
    
         while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        	 lines.add(line);
    //    	 arr[i]=line;
    //    	 i++;
             text.append(line);
             text.append('\n');
         }
         arr = lines.toArray(new String[lines.size()]);
     }

[Ulf Dittmer]

For starters, PDF files are binary, not text. That means you can't use Readers to work with them, you need to use Streams.

So the actual problem is how to get an InputStream from a file on the SD card? The Android Dev Guide has a page called "Data Storage" that talks about using SD cards.

[Mohit G Gupta]

FileReader doesnot works for pdf files.
please,tell me how to use pdfbox within the android

[Ulf Dittmer]

FileReader doesnot works for pdf files.

Not just FileReader - all Readers and Writers. It's crucial that you understand the difference between text files and binary files.

please,tell me how to use pdfbox within the android

I have no idea whether PDFBox works on Android, but I pointed you to a resource that explains how to get an InputStream from a file on an SD card, and it seems that PDDocument.load can use an InputStream as well as a Reader. What else are you looking for?