PDFs are the de facto normal for distributing and sharing fixed-layout paperwork as we speak. A fast survey of my laptop computer folders reveals account statements, receipts, technical papers, e book chapters, and presentation slides—all PDFs. Numerous invaluable data finds its approach into all method of PDF recordsdata. Which is a good motive for Rockset to assist SQL queries on PDF recordsdata, in our mission to make information extra usable to everybody.
Quick SQL on PDFs in Rockset
Rockset makes it simple for builders and information practitioners to ingest and run quick SQL on semi-structured information in a wide range of information codecs, equivalent to JSON, CSV, and XLSX, with none upfront information prep. Now add PDFs to the combination, and customers can mix PDF information with information of different codecs, from numerous sources, into their SQL analyses. Or analyzing a number of PDFs collectively is likely to be invaluable too, when you’ve got a sequence of electrical energy payments like I do, as we’ll see in our quick instance under.
Importing PDFs
From an current collection, click on the Upload File button on the prime proper of the console and specify PDF format to ingest into Rockset.
Querying Information in PDFs
I uploaded 9 months of electrical energy payments. We will use the DESCRIBE command to view the fields that had been extracted from the PDFs.
> describe "elec-bills";
+--------------------------------------------+---------------+---------+-----------+
| discipline | occurrences | complete | kind |
|--------------------------------------------+---------------+---------+-----------|
| ['Author'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['CreationDate'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['Creator'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['ModDate'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['Producer'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['Subject'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['Title'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['_event_time'] | 9 | 9 | timestamp |
| ['_id'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['_meta'] | 9 | 9 | object |
| ['_meta', 'file_upload'] | 9 | 9 | object |
| ['_meta', 'file_upload', 'file'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['_meta', 'file_upload', 'file_upload_id'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['_meta', 'file_upload', 'upload_time'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['author'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['creation_date'] | 9 | 9 | int |
| ['creator'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['modification_date'] | 9 | 9 | int |
| ['producer'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['subject'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['text'] | 9 | 9 | string |
| ['title'] | 9 | 9 | string |
+--------------------------------------------+---------------+---------+-----------+
Rockset parses out all of the metadata like creator, creation_date, and so on. from the doc together with the textual content.
The textual content discipline is usually the place a lot of the data in a PDF resides, so let’s look at what’s in a pattern textual content discipline.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| textual content |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| .... |
| .... |
| Assertion Date: 10/11/2018 |
| Your Account Abstract |
| .... |
| Complete Quantity Due: |
| $157.57 |
| Quantity Enclosed: |
| ... |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Combining Information from A number of PDFs
With my 9 months of eletricity payments ingested and listed in Rockset, I can do some easy evaluation of my utilization over this timespan. We will run a SQL question to pick out the month/yr and billing quantity out of textual content.
> with particulars as (
choose tokenize(REGEXP_EXTRACT(textual content, 'Assertion Date: .*'))[3] as month,
tokenize(REGEXP_EXTRACT(textual content, 'Assertion Date: .*'))[5] as yr,
solid(tokenize(REGEXP_EXTRACT(textual content, 'Complete Quantity Due:n.*nAmount Enclosed'))[4] as float) as quantity
from "elec-bills"
)
choose concat(month, '/', yr) as billing_period, quantity
from particulars
order by yr asc, month;
+----------+------------------+
| quantity | billing_period |
|----------+------------------|
| 47.55 | 04/2018 |
| 76.5 | 05/2018 |
| 52.28 | 06/2018 |
| 50.58 | 07/2018 |
| 47.62 | 08/2018 |
| 39.7 | 09/2018 |
| <null> | 10/2018 |
| 72.93 | 11/2018 |
| 157.57 | 12/2018 |
+----------+------------------+
And plot the ends in Superset.
My October invoice was surprisingly zero. Was the billing quantity not extracted appropriately? I went again and checked, and it seems I obtained a California Local weather Credit score in October which zeroed out my invoice, so ingesting and querying PDFs is working because it ought to!
