HTTP serving searchable PDF files

[jimoblak]

I am trying to find a solution for distributing searchable/indexed PDF files from a web server. Is this possible? I would like to be able to give the user a form field in a basic HTML page where they could enter a keyword. When submitted, the server would display links to all PDF files that contain that keyword.

We would run Apache or IIS from Windows on our LAN.

 

[buddyel]

I was just wondering if you ever found a solution to your problem. I am trying to do pretty much the same thing?

 

[jimoblak]

No solution yet.

There was some sort of an indexing service that is available as a download from adobe.com for IIS but I was hoping to go non-Microsoft (PHP scripting maybe).

 

[RMS10]

If you are using only the document summary area of the pdf (Title, Subject, Author and Keywords) you could write a program to extract this information and place it in a database. Your HTML front end could have these fields available to the user for searching. This solution worked very well for one of my customers since 90% of his documents were originally based as image or scanned files.