Basic Text Extraction using Java

Basic text extraction is the starting point for reading PDF content in Java. Aspose.PDF provides two common approaches:

• Use TextAbsorber when you need a plain text result from a document or page.
• Use ParagraphAbsorber when you need to preserve page, section, paragraph, line, and fragment grouping.

PDF pages do not store text like a word-processing document, so the extracted order depends on the page content stream and layout. For region-specific extraction, geometry details, multi-column layouts, annotations, highlighted text, or superscript and subscript detection, use the related extraction articles in this section.

Extract text from all pages

Use TextAbsorber to collect a flat text stream from the whole document and write it to a file. This is the simplest option when you only need the readable text content and do not need paragraph boundaries or coordinates.

1. Open the source PDF Document.
2. Create a TextAbsorber.
3. Visit all Page objects in the document.
4. Write the extracted text to the output file.

public static void extractTextFromAllPages(Path inputFile, Path outputFile) throws Exception {
    try (Document document = new Document(inputFile.toString())) {
        TextAbsorber textAbsorber = new TextAbsorber();
        document.getPages().accept(textAbsorber);
        Files.writeString(outputFile, textAbsorber.getText());
    }
}

Extract text from a specific page

Apply the absorber only to the page you need. Page numbers in the Document pages collection are 1-based, so get_Item(1) reads the first page.

1. Open the source PDF Document.
2. Create a TextAbsorber.
3. Visit the target Page.
4. Write the extracted text to the output file.

public static void extractTextFromPage(Path inputFile, Path outputFile, int pageNumber) throws Exception {
    try (Document document = new Document(inputFile.toString())) {
        TextAbsorber textAbsorber = new TextAbsorber();
        document.getPages().get_Item(pageNumber).accept(textAbsorber);
        Files.writeString(outputFile, textAbsorber.getText());
    }
}

Extract text by paragraph structure

Use ParagraphAbsorber when you need structural grouping instead of a single plain text stream. It returns page markups with sections, paragraphs, lines, and TextFragment objects, which is useful when the output must preserve logical blocks of text.

1. Open the source PDF Document.
2. Create a ParagraphAbsorber and visit the document.
3. Iterate through the page markups, sections, paragraphs, lines, and TextFragment objects.
4. Build the output text with page, section, and paragraph information.
5. Write the extracted paragraph text to the output file.

public static void extractParagraphsFromPdf(Path inputFile, Path outputFile) throws Exception {
    try (Document document = new Document(inputFile.toString())) {
        ParagraphAbsorber absorber = new ParagraphAbsorber();
        absorber.visit(document);

        StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder();
        for (PageMarkup pageMarkup : absorber.getPageMarkups()) {
            int sectionIndex = 1;
            for (MarkupSection section : pageMarkup.getSections()) {
                int paragraphIndex = 1;
                for (MarkupParagraph paragraph : section.getParagraphs()) {
                    StringBuilder paragraphText = new StringBuilder();
                    for (List<TextFragment> line : paragraph.getLines()) {
                        for (TextFragment fragment : line) {
                            paragraphText.append(fragment.getText());
                        }
                        paragraphText.append("\r\n");
                    }
                    text.append("Page ").append(pageMarkup.getNumber())
                            .append(", Section ").append(sectionIndex)
                            .append(", Paragraph ").append(paragraphIndex)
                            .append(":\n");
                    text.append(paragraphText).append("\n");
                    paragraphIndex++;
                }
                sectionIndex++;
            }
        }

        Files.writeString(outputFile, text.toString());
    }
}