Details scraping is the process of automatically sorting through information contained via the internet inside html, PDF or other documents and getting relevant information to into databases and spreadsheets to get later retrieval. On most websites, the text is easily and accessibly written in the source code but an increasing number of online businesses are using Adobe PDF format (Portable Document Format: A good format which can be viewed by the free Adobe Acrobat software programs on almost any operating system. See below for a link. ). The advantage of PDF format is that the document looks exactly the same regardless of what computer you view it from making it ideal for business methods, specification sheets, etc .; the disadvantage is that the text is became an image from which you often cannot easily copy and even paste. PDF Scraping is the process of data scraping information contained in PDF files. To PDF scrape a EBOOK document, you must employ a more diverse set of tools.

There are two important types of PDF files: those built from a text submit and those built from an image (likely scanned in). Adobe's own software is capable of PDF scraping from text-based LIBRO files but special tools are needed for PDF scraping text from image-based PDF files. The primary tool pertaining to PDF scraping is the OCR program. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, programs scan a document for minor pictures that they can separate into letters. These pictures are actually then compared to actual letters and if matches are found, the very letters are copied into a file. OCR programs can do PDF scraping of image-based PDF files quite appropriately but they are not perfect.

Once the OCR program or China program has finished PDF scraping a document, you can search through the data to find the parts you are most interested in. This post can then be stored into your favorite database or spreadsheet application. Some PDF scraping programs can sort the data right into databases and/or spreadsheets automatically making your job that much better.