![]() (1 of 3) Basic: outputting the raw text line-by-line I’ve found that even for PDFs that turn off the ability to copy text from the document, PDFBox can still extract the content. It allows the “creation of new PDF documents, manipulation of existing documents and the ability to extract content from documents”. The Apache PDFBox library is an open-source Java tool for interacting with PDF documents. Intrigued by this rare example of transparency into how professional and advanced horse racing tournament players approached this format, I decided to see if I could extricate the data within to conduct some analysis for educational and entertainment purposes. It would also be the first time that the Breeders’ Cup had taken the decision to publish all the players’ tournament wagers placed at the conclusion of the event.Ī few days after the competition ended, a 900+ page PDF file was posted to the Breeders’ Cup website containing a breakdown of all of the wagers placed by each player. In 2018, 391 entries competed for the $1 million prize pool. The Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC) is an annual $10,000 buy-in, live-money horse racing handicapping tournament tied to the two-day, 14-race $30 million Breeders’ Cup World Championships event. I also touch on the actual mechanics of working through a problem like this - using tools like Excel to explore and analyze both the nature of the PDF, as well as the vagaries of the data itself. ![]() I show how the raw text can be extracted and then detail much more low-level control over the text characters positioned within the pages. ![]() In this post, I outline a real-world example of parsing a large PDF file that contains repeated tables of data. However, when information, especially structured data, is contained within a PDF document and one wishes to extract that content, the format becomes quite difficult for developers to interact with. Unlike websites, often what you see on the PDF will be exactly how it will be printed on a physical page, with the added benefits of easily distributable files and near-ubiquitous support of software able to read this format on almost any standard digital device. PDF continues to be a popular document publishing format because users see them as the digital equivalent of paper documents.
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