MQSeries.net :: View topic

goffinf · Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 9:45 pm Post subject:

Has anyone attempted to access data from within a (Adobe) PDF received by a Message broker flow ?

I assume that there MAY be some Java libraries to do so, anyone prepared to recommend one.

I don't need to change the PDF in any way, but inside the PDF in the section used for non-printable characters, the sending application is providing some data that the flow needs (I know it would be easier if that was sent as a separate part of the same message, but take it from me, the sending application can ONLY pass me a PDF and nothing else).

Internally PDFs have a defined structure, so I don't know if anyone has come across a MessageSet or perhaps a Java library that enables that structure to be accessed efficiently.

I suppose its possible to just treat it as text and search for some specific charcater sequence acting as a tag, it just sounds a bit inefficient ?

These PDFs aren't currently that big (probably mostly < 1MB) but there's no guarantee that they will remain small and it seems that sometime soon messages will turn up with multiple PDFs (say 3 or 4) each of which will need to be 'read'.

Thanks

Fraser.