Re: PDF Parsing

I've used PDF::API2, and although it is an excellent parser, for large documents, it can be unwieldy because it seems to load / parse the entire document before you are able to do anything with it, chewing up great heaping gobs of memory in the process.

This can be problematic if your document is particularly large or if you have a large number of documents to parse.

(I experienced this issue firsthand when I had to parse and modify thousands of PDF files for a time-critical project and it took quite literally the better part of a weekend with two dedicated laptops churning away 24x7.)

Do any of the monks who've worked with CAM::PDF know whether it behaves the same way?

Comment on Re: PDF Parsing

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Re^2: PDF Parsing by Anonymous Monk on Dec 03, 2007 at 16:49 UTC
Hi Starky! Can you give me an example how to parse PDF with PDF::API2? I want to find Xobjects and replace them . . . Would be great to here from you. Regards Alex	[reply]
Re^2: PDF Parsing by ademmler (Novice) on Dec 03, 2007 at 16:55 UTC
Hi Starky! Again me, as a "known monk" - same question. Can you give me an example how to parse PDF with PDF::API2? I want to find Xobjects and replace them . . . Would be great to here from you. Regards Alex PS: Sorry for my confusing usage of this forum.	[reply]
Re^3: PDF Parsing by Anonymous Monk on Jan 03, 2008 at 15:18 UTC
Hi, figuring how to parse existing PDF files gave me headaches but reading PDF::API2::File's perldoc I figured it out. if you do something like my $foo = PDF::API2->open(bar.pdf);, the file structure is stored in $foo->{'pdf'}. Then you've got the Catalog (see pdf' specs) that you can parse to get objects indirect references (pages & annots or acroform) Once you've got an hash refering to the item you want to mess with you can use read_obj method like that : my $pdfapi = PDF::API2->open(foo.pdf); my $pdf = $pdfapi->{'pdf'}; my $object = $pdf->read_obj($indirect_reference_hashref);	[reply]