[Acrobat SDK Plug-in Development] How to extract text from Acrobat Text Highlight Tool?

This is an update to my previous post on Acrobat SDK Plug-in Development: How to create Text Highlight. In this new code, I'll explain far easier way to manipulate Adobe Acrobat Text Highlight tool to get the text from the highlighted area and then use it in your plugin.

This code snippet will explain how to extract text highlighted using the Text Highlight tool plug-in using Acrobat SDK. I assume that you've already know how to implement basic plug-in functionality using Acrobat SDK. The version of the SDK used in this code example is Acrobat XI SDK. I also assume following requirements,

• Read PDF 32000-1:2008 12.5.6.10, “Text Markup Annotations”, for further information
  wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf
• You can use PDWordFinderAcquireWordList() method to get the total word list and then use a loop to create the CosObj Dic. Read my previous post about how to extract terms from PDF and create COS Dictionary. 

Step 1: If you start with the BasicPlugin.cpp in the Acrobat SDK then you should have the following function when you click on your plugin from the menu bar,

ACCB1 void ACCB2 MyPluginCommand(void *clientData)

{

// get this plugin's name for display

ASAtom NameAtom = ASExtensionGetRegisteredName (gExtensionID);

const char * name = ASAtomGetString(NameAtom);

char str[256];

sprintf(str,"This menu item is added by plugin %s.\n", name);

// try to get front PDF document 

AVDoc avDoc = AVAppGetActiveDoc();

//Display words of the pdf file. 

PDDoc currentPDDoc =AVDocGetPDDoc(avDoc);

AVPageView currentPageView = AVDocGetPageView (avDoc);

ASInt32 pageNum = AVPageViewGetPageNum(currentPageView);

//Create a PDWordFinderConfigRec object;

PDWordFinderConfigRec pConfig;

//Set the DWordFinderConfigRec object's attributes

memset(&pConfig, 0, sizeof(PDWordFinderConfigRec));

pConfig.recSize = sizeof(PDWordFinderConfigRec);

pConfig.ignoreCharGaps = true;

pConfig.ignoreLineGaps = true;

pConfig.noAnnots = true;

pConfig.noEncodingGuess = true;

//Create a PDWordFinder object

PDWordFinder pdWordFinder = PDDocCreateWordFinderEx(currentPDDoc, WF_LATEST_VERSION, false, &pConfig);

//Create a callback function

PDWordProc wordProc = NULL;

wordProc= ASCallbackCreateProto(PDWordProc, &getHighlightedText);

//Extract and display words highlighted 

PDWordFinderEnumWords(pdWordFinder, pageNum, wordProc, NULL);

PDWordFinderDestroy(pdWordFinder);

string strs = pdfCorpus.str();

const char* ps = strs.c_str();

AVAlertNote(ps);

if(avDoc==NULL) {

// if no doc is loaded, make a message.

strcat(str,"There is no PDF document loaded in Acrobat.");

}

else {

// if a PDF is open, get its number of pages

PDDoc pdDoc = AVDocGetPDDoc (avDoc);

int numPages = PDDocGetNumPages (pdDoc);

sprintf(str,"%sThe active PDF document has %d pages.", str, numPages);

}

}

Step 2: Now use the getHighlightText method to go through all the annotations and get PDTextSelect object. 

ACCB1 ASBool ACCB2 getHighlightedText(PDWordFinder wObj, PDWord wInfo, ASInt32 pgNum, void *clientData)

{

char stringBuffer[100];

AVDoc avDoc = AVAppGetActiveDoc();

PDDoc currentPDDoc =AVDocGetPDDoc(avDoc);

CosDoc cd = PDDocGetCosDoc(currentPDDoc);

PDAnnot annot;

PDPage pdpage = PDDocAcquirePage(currentPDDoc, pgNum);

ASInt32 numAnnots =PDPageGetNumAnnots(pdpage);

ASFixedRect boundingRect; // bounding rectangle of the term

char * annBuf;

for(ASInt32 i = 0; i< numAnnots; i++){

annot = PDPageGetAnnot(pdpage, i);

if (ASAtomFromString("Highlight") == PDAnnotGetSubtype(annot))

{

// Gets the annotation's rect

PDAnnotGetRect(annot, &boundingRect);

// Gets the text selection from the annotation's rect

PDTextSelect textSelect = PDDocCreateTextSelect(currentPDDoc, pgNum, &boundingRect);

                        // create a callback to get the text from highlighted bounding box

PDTextSelectEnumText( textSelect , ASCallbackCreateProto(PDTextSelectEnumTextProc,&pdTextSelectEnumTextProc) , &annBuf );

}

}

return 0;

}

Step 3: Create a callback function to extract the text from the PDTextSelect object. Here, pdfCorpus is a stringstream so I can use that in another part of the code. 

ACCB1 ASBool ACCB2 pdTextSelectEnumTextProc(void* procObj, PDFont font, ASFixed size, PDColorValue color, char* text,ASInt32 textLen)
{
char stringBuffer[200];
strcpy(stringBuffer,text);
pdfCorpus << stringBuffer;
return true ;
}