How to extract sections of specific text from PDF files into R data frames? Complex - r

Question

Please any advice will be appreciated.. This is time sensitive. I have PDF reports that are mostly blocks of text. They are long reports (~50-100 pages). I'm trying to write an R script that is capable of extracting specific sections of these PDF reports using start/stop positional strings. NOTE: Reports vary in length. Short example:
DOCUMENT TITLE
01. SECTION 1
This is a test section that I DONT want to extract.
This text would normally be much longer... Over 100 words.
Sample Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text
02. SECTION 2
This is a test section that I do want to extract.
This text would normally be much longer... Over 100 words.
Sample Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text
...
11. SECTION 11
This is a test section that I do want to extract.
This text would normally be much longer... Over 100 words.
Sample Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text
...
12. SECTION 12
This is a test section that I DONT want to extract.
This text would normally be much longer... Over 100 words.
Sample Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text
...
So the goal in this example, is to extract the paragraph below Section 2 and store it as a field/data point. I also want to store Section 11 as a field/data point. Note the document is in PDF format
I have tried used pdftools, tm, stringr, I've literally spent 20+ hours searching for solutions and tutorials on how to do this. I know it is possible as I have done it using SAS before...
Please see code below, I added comments with questions. I believe RegEx will be part of the solution but i'm so lost.
# Init Step
libs <- c("tm","class","stringr","testthat",
"pdftools")
lapply(libs, require, character.only= TRUE)
# File name & location
filename = "~/pdf_test/test.pdf"
# converting PDF to text
textFile <- pdf_text(filename)
cat(textFile[1]) # Text of pg. 1 of PDF
cat(textFile[2]) # Text of pg. 2 of PDF
# I'm at a loss of how to parse the values I want. I have seen things
like:
sectionxyz <- str_extract_all(textFile, #??? )
rm_between()
# 1) How do I loop through each page of PDF file?
# 2) How do I identify start/stop positions for section to be extracted?
# 3) How do I add logic to extract text between start/stop positions
# and then add the result to a data field?
# 4) Sections in PDF will be long sections of text (i.e. 100+ words into a field)
NEW------
So I have been able to:
-Prep doc correctly
-Identify the correct start/stop patterns:
length(grep("^11\\. LIMITS OF LIABILITY( +){1}$",source_main2))
length(grep("Applicable\\s+[Ll]imits\\s+[Oo]f",source_main2))
pat_st_lol <- "^11\\. LIMITS OF LIABILITY( +){1}$"
pat_ed_lol <- "Applicable\\s+[Ll]imits\\s+[Oo]f"
The length(grep()) statements verify only 1 instance is being found. From here I am kind of lost based on how to use gsub or similar to extract the portion of data I want. I tried:
pat <- paste0(".*",pat_st_lol,"(.*)",pat_ed_lol,".*")
test <- gsub(".*^11\\. LIMITS OF LIABILITY( +){1}$(.*)\n",
"Applicable\\s+[Ll]imits\\s+[Oo]f", source_main2)
test2 <-gsub(".*pat_st_lol(.*)\npat_ed_lol.*")
So far, little progress, but progress anyways.

Answer 1

Provided you can come with a systematic to identify the sections you need, you could, as you indicated, use Regex to extract the text you want.
In your above example, something like gsub(".*SECTION 11(.*)\n12\\..*","\\1",string) ought to work.
Now you could define patterns dynamically using paste and iterate through all files. Each result can then be saved in your data.frame, list,....
Here is a brief more detailed explanation of the pattern:
Firstly, .* is way of matching "anything". If you want to match digits you can use \\d or equivalently [0-9]. Here is a short intro to Regex in R (which I found to be quite useful) where you can find several character classes.
.* at the edges of the pattern means that there can be text before/after
(.*) denotes the content we want (so here matching any content as .* is used). Basically it means extract "anything" between SECTION 11 and 12.
\\. means the dot and \n is the "newline" metacharacter (as before "12.", a new line is started)
In Regex you can create groupings within your pattern using the brackets, i.e. gsub(".*(\\d{2}\\:\\d{2})", "\\1","18.05.2018, 21:37") will return 21:37, or gsub("([A-z]) \\d+","\\1","hello 123") will give hello.
Now the second argument in gsub can and is often used to provide a substitute, i.e. something to replace to matched pattern with. Here however, we do not want any substitue, we want to extract something. \\1 means extract the first grouping, i.e. what it inside the first brackets (you could have multiple groupings).
Finally, string is the string from which we want to extract, i.e. the PDF file
Now if you want to perform something similar in a loop you could do the following:
# we are in the loop
# first is your starting point in the extraction, i.e. "SECTION 11"
# last is your end point, i.e. "12."
first <- "SECTION 11" # first and last can be dynamically assigned
last <- "12\\." # "\\" is added before the dot as "." is a Regex metachar
# If last doesn't systematically contain a dot
# you could use gsub to add "\\" before the dot when needed:
# gsub("\\.","\\\\.",".") returns "\\."
# so gsub("\\.","\\\\.","12.") returns "12\\."
pat <- paste0(".*",first,"(.*)","\n",last,".*") #"\n" is added to stop before the newline, but it could be omitted (then "\n" might appear in the extraction)
gsub(pat,"\\1",string) # returns the same as above