PDF reading . NET

Question

I have been researching for a long time a way to read a pdf document that contains Sinapi Inputs tables and save the data in my database, and I do not do the least how to, someone could give a hint?

pdf link here

more complex pdf link here

Answer 1

It is even possible to read, however, it is only feasible if the PDF maintains a "clean" format (with well defined rows and columns, no multiline, etc.). Even so a change in layout can break all the code done for reading the PDF.

In most cases a viable solution would be to transform the PDF into another format: HTML, TXT, Xls, etc.

Here has a good online tool for PDF to HTML conversion that would make it easy to read in various languages (including C#). See an example of how your document would look:

Document converted to HTML:

Since the document does not have tables with defined default, the conversion makes HTML difficult to read, for example with the Htmlagilitypack

One of the tools for converting PDF into a "readable" format for a programming language is the Able2extract

See the settings and how your document was converted to XLS:

It is the best option for conversion because it allows you to align/select only the required text

Setup: Select only table and columns for conversion

A free tool to extract PDF data: PDF Multitool Utility

Converted table, now just create code for reading the XLS

Surely the code to read XLS is much more practical than for PDF

string con = @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=D:\temp\test.xls;Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;'"
using(OleDbConnection connection = new OleDbConnection(con))
{
    connection.Open();
    OleDbCommand command = new OleDbCommand("select * from [Sheet1$]", connection) 
    using(OleDbDataReader dr = command.ExecuteReader())
    {
         while(dr.Read())
         {
             var row1Col0 = dr[0];
             Console.WriteLine(row1Col0);
         }
    }
}

Some of the various examples available on the WEB: Here and Here