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When it comes to text search within a pdf document, pretty much every pdf reader software supports it (be it Adobe Reader or any third-party pdf viewer). However, it becomes tricky when there are more than one pdf document to search.
In Linux, there are command-line tools (e.g., pdftotext or pdfgrep) that can be used to do simple search on multiple pdf documents at once. Compare to these command-line utilities, a desktop application called recoll is a much more advanced and user-friendly text search tool. In this tutorial, I will describe how to search multiple pdf documents for text by using recoll.
The powerful features of recoll include:
In the configuration window, you will see "Top directories" (directories which contain documents to search), and "Skipped paths" (file system paths to avoid when building a document index) under "General parameters" tab. In this example, I add "~/Documents" to "Top directories" field.
Under "Local parameters" tab, you can specify other indexing
criteria, such as file names to skip, max file size, etc. Once you are
done, go ahead and create a document database index. The document index
building process uses external programs (e.g., pdftotext for pdf documents, antiword for MS Word documents) to extract texts from individual documents, and create an index out of the extracted texts.
Once an initial document index is built, you can check what kind of documents have been indexed, by going to "Help"-->"Show indexed types" menu. Make sure that "application/pdf" mime-type is included.
A search result shows a list of pdf documents along with document snippets and page number information that are matched with search query. The example output shows a list of pdf documents that contain a phrase "virtual machine". You can check document previews, or open the matched documents by using an external pdf viewer.
Using recoll, you can search pdf documents that contains specific word(s) in the document title. For example, by typing in "title:kernel" in search query, you can search for pdf documents which contain "kernel" in their titles.
Using advanced search option, you can define various other search criteria.
As documents are added, updated or removed, you will need to update an existing document index. You can do it manually by clicking on "Update Index" menu.
You can also update an existing document index automatically, either with a periodic cron job or with a background daemon process.
When it comes to text search within a pdf document, pretty much every pdf reader software supports it (be it Adobe Reader or any third-party pdf viewer). However, it becomes tricky when there are more than one pdf document to search.
In Linux, there are command-line tools (e.g., pdftotext or pdfgrep) that can be used to do simple search on multiple pdf documents at once. Compare to these command-line utilities, a desktop application called recoll is a much more advanced and user-friendly text search tool. In this tutorial, I will describe how to search multiple pdf documents for text by using recoll.
What is Recoll?
recoll is an open-source desktop application specializing in text search. recoll maintains a database index for all document files in a target storage location (e.g., a specific folder, home directory, disk drive, etc). The document index contains texts extracted from document files with external helper programs. Using the document index, recoll can perform more advanced queries than simple regular expression based search.The powerful features of recoll include:
- Supports multiple document formats (e.g., pdf, doc, text, html, mailbox).
- Automatically indexes document contents from files, emails, email attachments, compressed archives, etc.
- Indexes web pages you visited (with the help of Firefox extension).
- Supports multiple languages and Unicode-based multi-character sets.
- Supports advanced search, such as proximity search and filtering based on file type, file system location, modification time, and file size.
- Supports search with multiple entry fields such as document title, keyword, author, etc.
Install Recoll on Linux
To install recoll and external helper programs on Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint:
$ sudo apt-get install recoll poppler-utils antiword
To install recoll and external helper programs on Fedora:
$ sudo yum install recoll poppler-utils antiword
To install recoll on CentOS or RHEL, first enable EPEL repository, and then run:
$ sudo yum install recoll poppler-utils antiword
Build a Document Index with Recoll
To launch recoll, simply run:
$ recoll
The first time you launch recoll, you will see the screen
shown below. Here you are asked to choose one of two menu before
starting indexing: (1) "Indexing configuration" which controls how to
build a document database index, or (2) "Indexing schedule" which
controls how often to update a database index. For now, click on
"Indexing configuration" menu.In the configuration window, you will see "Top directories" (directories which contain documents to search), and "Skipped paths" (file system paths to avoid when building a document index) under "General parameters" tab. In this example, I add "~/Documents" to "Top directories" field.
Once an initial document index is built, you can check what kind of documents have been indexed, by going to "Help"-->"Show indexed types" menu. Make sure that "application/pdf" mime-type is included.
Search Multiple PDF Documents for Text
You are now ready to conduct document search. Enter any word or phrase (with quotes) to search for.A search result shows a list of pdf documents along with document snippets and page number information that are matched with search query. The example output shows a list of pdf documents that contain a phrase "virtual machine". You can check document previews, or open the matched documents by using an external pdf viewer.
Using recoll, you can search pdf documents that contains specific word(s) in the document title. For example, by typing in "title:kernel" in search query, you can search for pdf documents which contain "kernel" in their titles.
Using advanced search option, you can define various other search criteria.
As documents are added, updated or removed, you will need to update an existing document index. You can do it manually by clicking on "Update Index" menu.
You can also update an existing document index automatically, either with a periodic cron job or with a background daemon process.
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