Search PDF Files with Java

JPedal is written in 100% Java and does not need additional platform-specific native libraries to be installed. If it runs Java 8 or above, it runs JPedal.

JPedal allows you to search PDF files for any text String (and it can allow use of Regular Expressions). Search one page or the whole document and find any instances of the text - JPedal takes care of all the decoding and grouping of the PDF data.

Search for text in the PDF Viewer

JPedal allows you to search for text directly from the PDF Viewer. You can choose to:

Restrict search results to whole words
Search with case sensitivity
Allow search results across multiple lines
Ignore space characters when searching

Search for text directly from your Java code

You can also search for text in a PDF file as a server process. For complex searches, you can specify a search type. For example you can choose to highlight all results, use regular expressions, search case sensitively and more.

Alternatively you can convert a PDF into a whole list of keywords (with locations) and provide a database index of the PDF file text content.

Javadoc and Code Examples

FindTextInRectangle provides access to API methods for searching PDF files and includes code examples.