Subject: How to read an external pdf file from postgres?

From: Amine Tengilimoglu <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 14:16:34 +0300

Hi;

     I want to read an external pdf file from postgres. pdf file will
exist on the disk. postgres only know the disk full path as metadata. Is
there any software or extension that can be used for this? Or do we have to
develop software for it?  Or what is the best approach for this? I'd
appreciate it if anyone with experience could make suggestions.

 Thanks.

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 12:25:18 +0100

On 12.01.22 12:16, Amine Tengilimoglu wrote:
> there any software or extension that can be used for this? Or do we have 
> to develop software for it?  Or what is the best approach for this? I'd 

You could write a function in PL/Perl or PL/Python to open and read the 
file and process the PDF data, using some third-party module that surely 
exists somewhere.

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From: Дмитрий Иванов <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 19:32:36 +0500

What are you going to do with the data?
If you want to analyze it in some way, I can't think of a better option
with a Python function. Or do you just want to transfer them? There are
options here too, but in this case I like Python better.
--
Regards, Dmitry!

ср, 12 янв. 2022 г. в 16:16, Amine Tengilimoglu <[email-masked]
>:

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From: Ian Lawrence Barwick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 23:35:16 +0900

2022年1月12日(水) 20:16 Amine Tengilimoglu <[email-masked]>:
>
>   Hi;
>
>      I want to read an external pdf file from postgres. pdf file will exist on the disk. postgres only know the disk full path as metadata. Is there any software or extension that can be used for this? Or do we have to develop software for it?  Or what is the best approach for this? I'd appreciate it if anyone with experience could make suggestions.

By "read" do you mean "open the file and meaningful extract data from it"? If
so, speaking from prior experience, don't. And if you really have to, make sure
the source PDF is guaranteed to be in a well-defined, predictable format
enforceable by contract law and/or people with sharp pointy sticks. I have
successfully suppressed the memories of whatever it is I once had to do with
reading data from PDFs, but though the data was eventually imported into
PostgreSQL, there was a lot of mangling probably involving a Perl module (other
languages are probably available) before it got anywhere near the database.

Reagrds

Ian Barwick

-- 
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