Question

I have block of text read from a PDF document, using the ItextSharp library(method: GetResultantText())

Consider the text is outlined/formatted in paragraphs:

*”Paragraph One.

Paragraph Two.
…

Paragraph n
“*

Is there a way to use the C# StringBuilder object, or perhaps an alternate approach, to store the text while retaining the fomatting?: contains carriage returns and paragraphs etc. and store the value in a varchar field in SQL Server 08.

Ultimately I intend storing the text into a varchar field and would like to retain the line feeds, carriage return [basic fomatting metadata], otherwise the extracted text is a single block of text that isn’t readabe when rendered.

I reckon invoking the toString() method on a StringBulder object removes all intermediate formatting characters in a text excecpt the terminating [newlinecharacter].

SimpleTextExtractionStrategy strategy;
            //StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter("c:\\pdfOutput.txt");

            for (int i = 1; i <= reader.NumberOfPages; i++)
            {
                try
                {
                    strategy = parser.ProcessContent(i, new SimpleTextExtractionStrategy());
                    buffer.AppendLine(strategy.GetResultantText());
                    //writer.WriteLine(strategy.GetResultantText());
                }
                catch (IndexOutOfRangeException e) { }
            }

            pdfText = buffer.ToString();
            Console.WriteLine("* End: Text Extraction Process ...");
            return pdfText = buffer.ToString();

If I uncomment and output to a text file, the fomatting is retained.
However if I save the resulting text into and entity defined as: All i get is a single block of text:

[System.Data.Linq.Mapping.Table(Name = "ReportsText")]
    public class ReportsText
    {
        [Column (IsDbGenerated = true, AutoSync=AutoSync.OnInsert)] 
        public int ID { get; set; }

        [Column(IsPrimaryKey = true, AutoSync = AutoSync.OnInsert)]
        public String image { get; set; } 

        [Column] public String announcement { get; set; }
    }

So pdfText is inteded to be stored into the annouuncement field. Cheers.

Answer 1

I dont think that it should remove formatting and if it doing so Make use of “\r\n” after each paragraph and than store it.