Find specific fields in a PDF using PowerShell, Regex, itextsharp.dll

Question

I'm very much a newbie when it comes to RegEx, but have been trying for the last few hours to figure out how to parse some data from a PDF using PowerShell and itextsharp.dll. I was going to post in the itextsharp forums, but I didn't actually see a place for help there. Just a bunch of how-to's for people that already understand RegEx well.

The PDF table looks like this:

The itextsharp.dll output looks like this:

Selection Criteria Report parameters
Select all Bottles where
Date Loaded - Date/Time (Bottle) is after or equal to '11/20/2015 15:50'
AND
Date Loaded - Date/Time (Bottle) is before or equal to '11/20/2015
16:10'
N/A
Unit # Status Determined Bottle ID Time to Find Cell
=W00000000000001 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 AAAACNSJ 5 2D55
=W00000000000002 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 AAAACNSA 5 2D56
1291231 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 AAAACNB 5 2D57
=W00000000000003 Positive 11/25/2015 16:08 AAAACNS9 5 2D58
1981231 Negative 11/25/2015 16:09 AAAACNSG 5 2D59
=W00000000000004 Negative 11/25/2015 16:10 AAAACNS7 5 2D60
Report
Reviewed By: Printed for manual signature
Page 1 of 1 11/25/2015 16:15

I've been using the following code and various different RegEx expressions to try and parse only the table data out and set each of the columns to a variable. I've omitted all of the different things I've tried because there has just been so much and I really don't know what I'm doing because of the way the data is.

 for ($page = 1; $page -le $reader.NumberOfPages; $page++)
{

    $strategy = new-object  'iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.SimpleTextExtractionStrategy'            
    $currentText = [iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.PdfTextExtractor]::GetTextFromPage($reader, $page, $strategy);
    [string[]]$Text += [system.text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString([System.Text.ASCIIEncoding]::Convert( [system.text.encoding]::default  , [system.text.encoding]::UTF8, [system.text.Encoding]::Default.GetBytes($currentText)));    
    $Line = $text -Split "`n"
    $i = 0
    Do {    
        If ($Line[$i] -match '(?m)^(?<unit_id>=?\w+)\s+(?<status>\w+)\s+(?<determined>\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}\s+‌​\d{2}:\d{2})\s+(?<bottle_id>\w+)\s+(?<time_to_find>\d)+\s+(?<cell>\w+)$') {
            Write-Host $Line[$i]
        }
        $i = $i + 1
    }
    While ($Line[$i])
}
$Reader.Close();

Is there anyone out there that could assist me with getting all these columns set to variables properly? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Thank you so much. Your question contributed to my own code. Here is me paying it forward (my code exports $results to an Excel spreadsheet for further data analysis):

for ($page = 1; $page -le $reader.NumberOfPages; $page++)
{

    $strategy = new-object  'iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.SimpleTextExtractionStrategy'            
    $currentText = [iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.PdfTextExtractor]::GetTextFromPage($reader, $page, $strategy);
    $Line = $currentText -Split "`n"
    $i = 0
    Do {    
        If ($Line[$i] -match '[0-9]{2}[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{4}') {
            $matched1 = [regex]::Match($Line[$i],'[0-9]{2}[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{4}').Value
            Write-Host $Line[$i]
            $response = @{
                File = $pdf.FullName
                Keyword1 = $matched1
                Line = $Line[$i]
                Page = $page
                BaseName = $pdf.Name
                Folder = $pdf.Directory
            }
            $results += New-Object PSObject -Property $response
        }
        $i = $i + 1
    }
    While ($Line[$i])
}

    $Reader.Close();

The $matched1 variable ensures I have a record of which keyword has been found on each document. In my case, any keyword with two-digits+two-letters+four-digits! Ex.: 11XX1111 I hope this helps someone out there. It is definitely not a refined code but it does what I want.

Regards,

Answer 2

Here is a sample regex that should parse the 1-line string well:

$text = '=W03651532551000 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 PAGYCNQ6 5 2D56'
$text -match '^(?<unit_id>=?\w+)\s+(?<status>\w+)\s+(?<determined>[\/\d\s:]+)\s+(?<bottle_id>\w+)\s+(?<time_to_find>\d+)\s+(?<cell>\w+)$'
$matches

Output:

Name                           Value
----                           -----
determined                     11/25/2015 16:08
cell                           2D56
status                         Negative
bottle_id                      PAGYCNQ6
time_to_find                   5
unit_id                        =W03651532551000
0                              =W03651532551000 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 PAGYCNQ6 5 2D56

And here is the more complex one:

$objcol = @()
$text = "=W03651532551000 Negative 11/25/2015 16:08 PAGYCNQ6 5 2D56`nLW03651532551000 Positive 11/25/2015 16:08 PAGYCNQ6 5 2D56"
$res = $text.Split("`n") | where {
 $_ -match '(?<unit_id>=?\w+)\s+(?<status>\w+)\s+(?<determined>\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}\s+\d{2}:\d{2})\s+(?<bottle_id>\w+)\s+(?<time_to_find>\d+)\s+(?<cell>\w+)' 
} | foreach {
   $obj = new-object PSObject –prop @{ 
    unitId=$matches['unit_id']; status=$matches['status']; 
    Determined=$matches['determined']; bottleId=$matches['bottle_id']; 
    timeToFind=$matches['time_to_find'] 
  }
  $objcol += $obj
 }
Write-Output $objcol

The result:

bottleId   : PAGYCNQ6
timeToFind : 5
Determined : 11/25/2015 16:08
unitId     : =W03651532551000
status     : Negative

bottleId   : PAGYCNQ6
timeToFind : 5
Determined : 11/25/2015 16:08
unitId     : LW03651532551000
status     : Positive