Extract specific field from multiple PDF files and write to text file

I have a directory filled with subdirectories, all with PDFs files and/or subdirectories filled with PDF files. Essentially, a very unorganized group of PDFs. What I'd like to do is parse each file, pulling 开发者_开发知识库the contents of one specific field, and dumping the output to a text file. The end result would be a large text file containing the contents of the field within each individual PDF. Surely this is possible. The question is whether it can be done easily, without much programming.

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In my opinion, the best option is to pay a little money for a 3rd party component that will provide an API.

http://www.aspose.com/categories/java-components/aspose.pdf-for-java/default.aspx http://www.pdfcomponent.com/java-pdf/

If it doesn't have to be in Java, I believe that PHP has an open source library.

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I've only ever used the PDF generation features of iText, but I know it also has PDF text extraction features. It's licensed under the GPL, or a paid commercial license if you need to redistribute it.

http://itextpdf.com/