PDF Conversion

PDF Conversion#

The PDF Conversion step converts standard Microsoft Office documents (such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents) to PDF documents.

Overview#

The PDF Conversion step can convert non-plain text file formats to PDF format.

Documents from popular office suites, such as Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or Google Docs, can be used as input and get converted into PDFs.

Specifically, the detection of the file format happens through its MIME type. Documents with the following MIME types can be converted into PDFs by the PDF Conversion step:

application/msword
application/rtf
application/vnd.lotus-1-2-3
application/vnd.ms-excel
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12
application/vnd.ms-works
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.chart
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.formula
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics-template
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation-template
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet-template
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text-master
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text-template
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text-web
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template
application/vnd.sun.xml.calc
application/vnd.sun.xml.calc.template
application/vnd.sun.xml.draw
application/vnd.sun.xml.draw.template
application/vnd.sun.xml.impress
application/vnd.sun.xml.impress.template
application/vnd.sun.xml.math
application/vnd.sun.xml.writer
application/vnd.sun.xml.writer.global
application/vnd.sun.xml.writer.template
application/vnd.wordperfect
application/x-dbf
application/x-extension-txt
application/x-quattropro
application/x-t602

The PDF Conversion step belongs to the Enrich section, and it is part of the Binary Documents pipeline preset.

image1

When the PDF Conversion step is used in conjunction with the Content Augmentation and Content Extraction steps, the Pipeline Editor automatically sets its position before those two steps. This happens in order to enable further enrichments of the item to act on the obtained PDF representation, which will result in better processing and display of the item on the Squirro UI.

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Configuration#

The PDF Conversion pipeline step does not have any configuration options.

However, it is important to note a related configuration option; the pdfconversion.pdf-cache-ttl. This option is visible and can be configured only by server admins.

This option controls the number of seconds that the generated PDF remains in the pdf_conversion cache. By default, this is set to 1 day. Every time that an item with a PDF representation is accessed, its TTL is refreshed. If its TTL gets expired without the item being accessed by anyone, it is removed from the cache.

The next time that it will be requested, its PDF representation will be generated again and will be displayed as such on the Squirro UI. This is transparent to the end user.

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