How to extract text from a PDF in JavaScript

I wonder if is possible to get the text inside of a PDF file by using only Javascript? If yes, can anyone show me how?

I know there are some server-side java, c#, etc libraries but I would prefer not using a server. thanks

Because pdf.js has been developing over the years, I would like to give a new answer. That is, it can be done locally without involving any server or external service. The new pdf.js has a function: page.getTextContent(). You can get the text content from that. I've done it successfully with the following code.

1. What you get in each step is a promise. You need to code this way: .then( function(){...}) to proceed to the next step.

1. PDFJS.getDocument( data ).then( function(pdf) {

2. pdf.getPage(i).then( function(page){

3. page.getTextContent().then( function(textContent){

2. What you finally get is an string array textContent.bidiTexts[]. You concatenate them to get the text of 1 page. Text blocks' coordinates are used to judge whether newline or space need to be inserted. (This may not be totally robust, but from my test it seems ok.)

3. The input parameter data needs to be either a URL or ArrayBuffer type data. I used the ReadAsArrayBuffer(file) function in FileReader API to get the data.

Note: According to some other user, the library has updated and caused the code to break. According to the comment by async5 below, you need to replace textContent.bidiTexts with textContent.items.

    function Pdf2TextClass(){
     var self = this;
     this.complete = 0;

    /**
     *
     * @param data ArrayBuffer of the pdf file content
     * @param callbackPageDone To inform the progress each time
     *        when a page is finished. The callback function's input parameters are:
     *        1) number of pages done;
     *        2) total number of pages in file.
     * @param callbackAllDone The input parameter of callback function is 
     *        the result of extracted text from pdf file.
     *
     */
     this.pdfToText = function(data, callbackPageDone, callbackAllDone){
     console.assert( data  instanceof ArrayBuffer  || typeof data == 'string' );
     PDFJS.getDocument( data ).then( function(pdf) {
     var div = document.getElementById('viewer');
    
     var total = pdf.numPages;
     callbackPageDone( 0, total );        
     var layers = {};        
     for (i = 1; i <= total; i++){
        pdf.getPage(i).then( function(page){
        var n = page.pageNumber;
        page.getTextContent().then( function(textContent){
          if( null != textContent.bidiTexts ){
            var page_text = "";
            var last_block = null;
            for( var k = 0; k < textContent.bidiTexts.length; k++ ){
                var block = textContent.bidiTexts[k];
                if( last_block != null && last_block.str[last_block.str.length-1] != ' '){
                    if( block.x < last_block.x )
                        page_text += "\r\n"; 
                    else if ( last_block.y != block.y && ( last_block.str.match(/^(\s?[a-zA-Z])$|^(.+\s[a-zA-Z])$/) == null ))
                        page_text += ' ';
                }
                page_text += block.str;
                last_block = block;
            }

            textContent != null && console.log("page " + n + " finished."); //" content: \n" + page_text);
            layers[n] =  page_text + "\n\n";
          }
          ++ self.complete;
          callbackPageDone( self.complete, total );
          if (self.complete == total){
            window.setTimeout(function(){
              var full_text = "";
              var num_pages = Object.keys(layers).length;
              for( var j = 1; j <= num_pages; j++)
                  full_text += layers[j] ;
              callbackAllDone(full_text);
            }, 1000);              
          }
        }); // end  of page.getTextContent().then
      }); // end of page.then
    } // of for
  });
 }; // end of pdfToText()
}; // end of class