Get coordinates of a text in a PDF document in UWP PDF Viewer

8 Jun 20212 minutes to read

The SfPdfViewer control allows you to acquire the coordinates of multiple instances of a particular text in a page of the PDF document. The following code illustrates the same. Here ‘buffer’ is the byte array read from the PDF file either using FileOpenPicker or from Assets folder, as illustrated in the Viewing PDF section.

C#

private void Page_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    PdfLoadedDocument loadedDocument = new PdfLoadedDocument(buffer);
    pdfViewer.LoadDocument(loadedDocument);
}

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    //Creates an instance to get the list of PdfTextCoordinates.
    List<PdfTextCoordinates> coordinates = new List<PdfTextCoordinates>();
    //Searches for the existence of a text and gets the text positions in a PDF page.
    pdfViewer.GetTextCoordinates("example", 4, out coordinates);
}

VBNET

Private Sub Page_Loaded(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)
    Dim loadedDocument As New PdfLoadedDocument(buffer)
    pdfViewer.LoadDocument(loadedDocument)
End Sub

Private Sub Button_Click(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)
    'Creates an instance to get the list of PdfTextCoordinates. 
    Dim coordinates As New List(Of PdfTextCoordinates)()
    'Searches for the existence of a text and gets the text positions in a PDF page.
    pdfViewer.GetTextCoordinates("example", 4, coordinates)
End Sub

NOTE

Getting coordinates of a text will work only after the display of the PDF document in the viewer, when tried before the display of the PDF document the out value will be a list of count 0.