Extracting specific values from changing image PDF

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1

Hello,

I am trying to build a robot that opens unstructured PDF invoices and gets specific values like the date of the invoice. I use google OCR to convert the image PDF to text which works fine but then I am stuck.

The value I want to extract always starts with the term “(12)” and right from this term the date is located. Sometimes there is also another word inbetween like in this example:

image
image693×133 2.32 KB

How can I extract the date?
The position of the date varies from invoice to invoice, so I can not use the location to extract the value.

Many thanks in advance.
Juka

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2

Hi,

If you are extracting specific values from PDF, best method is to use Regular Expresssions
Use Read pdf text and use match method of system.text.regularexpressions

Suppose your string is “(12)Date:07.02.2019” and in this scenario using the below Regex and as you told “Date” is optional , so if you remove the date from the string then also you will be able to extract the date using the below regex

(?<=[(]12[)]\s+(Date\s+)?:\s+)(\d{2}.\d{2}.\d{4})

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3

Hi @anil5,

thanks for your reply.
I already struggle with extracting the string “(12)Date:07.02.2019”. I have got the following string after converting the PDF to text with OCR:

(12) Date: 07.02.2019 (51) 000 753 999
(21) Signature
(43) Example text

How can I extract the string you mentioned?

Best regards

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4

Hi Juka,

You can try the a regex pattern similar to this one: (12) Date: (\d{2}.?\d{2}.?\d{4}.?)
Tip: you can try them all out in online regex testers such as https://regex101.com/

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5

Hi @MatthiasVG,

thanks you for your help.
I think thats exactly what I was missing. I will try it and let you know how it worked.

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6

please try this
(?<=[(]12[)]\s+(Date)?:\s+)(\d{2}.\d{2}.\d{4})

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7

Hi,

thanks for your help. I did an Regex tutorial to understand the code but I have got a problem with the matches activity. I would like to store the result in a variable and therefore I defined a string variable which I entered in the “Result” box of the matches activity. But I get an error as string seems not to be the right variable type. Also every other type I tried did not work (e.g. array).

How can I store the result of the match in a variable?

Best regards
Juka

8

Hi Juka,

The result of a matches function are stored in a

system.collections.generic.IEnumerable<system.text.RegularExpressions.match>

This is basically a collection of all the results that your regex pattern returns. To obtain the string values, you’ll need to loop through this with a for each. As type you have to select

system.text.RegularExpressions.match

Inside each item in the for each, you can then access the string. I personally always capture the string I want with a regex group (i.e between brackets → () ). You can use a syntax like item.groups(%x%).tostring with %x% being the number of the group you’re interested in

9

Honestly if the invoices are unstructured I would use a dedicated digitization solution with UiPath like Abbyy Flexicapture.