Very slow extracting text

[adepase]

I think I'm missed something, because I cannot think it needs tens of seconds (or even minutes) to extract text. Can you please help me? This is my code (I start calling simpleReadPdf):

        try {
            return PDDocument.load(file);
        } catch(IOException e) {
            // Probable encrypted text
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }
public static String simpleReadPdf(File file, Context context){
        StringBuffer text = null;
        PDFBoxResourceLoader.init(context);
        PDDocument document = FileReaderUtils.getPdfDoc(file, context);

        try {
            text = extractTextFromPDF(document);
        } catch (IOException ioe){
            // Probable encrypted text
            ioe.printStackTrace();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                if (document != null) document.close();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return text.toString();
    }

public static String extractTextFromPDF(PDDocument doc) throws IOException
    {
        String dataS = null;
        try
        {
            PDFTextStripper textStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
            textStripper.setStartPage(1);
            textStripper.setEndPage(3);
            dataS = textStripper.getText(doc);
        }
        finally
        {
            if (doc != null) doc.close();
        }
       return dataS;
}

[TomRoush]

What are the specs of device are you testing on? Stripping text is slow, but with the amount of pages you're stripping, it shouldn't be taking minutes to strip.

[adepase]

I'm testing on a Samsung s7 edge (so, a pretty good hardware) and trying to strip the attached pdf. 5 seconds only for pages from 0 to 3 (BTW: according to the docs it should start with 1 and be inclusive, but if I start from 1 I miss the front page) confessioni[1].pdf

Thank you

[TomRoush]

5 seconds for those pages is about what I would expect and similar to my time. As I mentioned before, text stripping is slow. The start page should be 1-indexed as you said, I'll look into why it's 0-indexed.

[arsh-7]

extracting text from sample is fast whereas when i use it in my own app it slows down massively any idea to fix it ?

Thank you for this library.

[TomRoush]

@pro-preet Its slower using the same PDF stripping in your code than it is stripping from sample?

[mobilecityCZ]

I have a similar issue - text extracting is very slow, but only if the phone (S7) is connected with PC. (tested with small PDF, 20 words only...)

[jenmo917]

+1

[peterdk]

Was looking to easily extract text, but a single page PDF with 35 lines of actual content, takes 20s or so on a fairly recent (Nokia 8.1 Android 10) device. Did not expect that.

I was expecting that the text is already present in the PDF format, so it's just a simple extraction? Apparently not?

update If you are looking to extract text in sub 1s time, I just found https://github.com/benjinus/android-support-pdfium which works very fast.

[pranayzv]

Try using thread to get data before its needed. you have to design an algorithm for when you want/need the data. hope it helps!