PDF Info Reader API – How to Extract PDF Information Online

Extracting information from a PDF document can be a tedious and repetitive task if done manually. Fortunately, we have created a PDF Info Reader that you can access via our API, and use it to read important information from your files. Read on to discover why you should use our PDF Info Reader API.

Benefits of Using Our PDF Info Reader API

Secure Online PDF Reader API

Our API servers are hosted on Amazon’s AWS infrastructure, which not only makes them fast but also secure. Any files you upload or download from our API are encrypted with SSL technology and transferred using TLS.

You can be sure your information is well protected, and it will not be shared with third parties. That is in sharp contrast with free PDF reader API services, which sell such information to cover their free services.

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SDKs and On-Premise Servers

We understand that in a production environment, you may have special needs that make it convenient to run operations on-premise. We also know you may need to adapt our API PDF Info Reader service to your customer IT infrastructure.

That is why we offer you an option to transfer some functionalities of our PDF Info Reader, to your on-premise server. On request, we can also provide your development team our API SDKs.

Processing Large Files on Our PDF Info Reader API

You can use our PDF Info Reader to extract information from small PDFs, on sync mode, as long as they can be processed within 25 seconds. However, as you will notice that you get timeout errors when processing over 100 pages.

To avoid getting timeout errors, you must run the PDF reader API in “async” mode, when processing over 100 PDF pages, or generally large files.

You can enable “async” mode, by setting the “async” input param to “true.” That will instruct the API method to create a background process for that job. Moreover, it will output a unique ID for that job, using “jobID” property, and an access URL for that job, using the “URL” property.

How to Upload Files and Run PDF Info Reader API

Step 1: Get Upload URL

Use the “/file/upload/get-presigned-url” to request a temporary URL. The app will return a “presignedUrl”, which you can use to upload your file and a “URL” for accessing the uploaded file.

Step 2: Upload File

Use PUT to upload your file to the API’s “presignedUrl”, which you received in Step 1. That file can now be accessed using the “URL” from step 1.

Step 3: Call API

Call the API by setting the “URL” from Step 1 as the input param. You may also set “async” param to “true”, to run large files in the background. The API will respond by returning an output URL, and a corresponding “jobId” to identify that job uniquely.

Step 4: Check Status

With the job running in the background, you can use “/job/check” with that job’s “jobId” param, to get an execution “status”.

Step 5: Download File

When the API is done reading your PDF info, it will return a “status” param as “success”. You can then use the URL from step 3, to access your PDF info.

Conclusion

That is all you need to read information from your PDF. However, if you want to read specialized information such as radio boxes and list boxes, then you can use PDF/Info/Fields API. We hope you found this guide to be informative, and you will enjoy using our PDF Info Reader.