Extract text from EPUB eBooks

To extract a text from EPUB e-books GetText and GetText(pageIndex) methods is used. These methods allow to extract a text from the entire document or a text from the selected page. Raw mode is not supported for EPUB.

Here are the steps to extract a text from EPUB e-book:

• Instantiate Parser object for the initial e-book;
• Call GetText method and obtain TextReader object;
• Read a text from reader.

The following example demonstrates how to extract a text from EPUB e-book:

// Create an instance of Parser class
using(Parser parser = new Parser(filePath))
{
    // Extract a text into the reader
    using(TextReader reader = parser.GetText())
    {
        // Print a text from the e-book
        Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
    }
}

Here are the steps to extract a text from the page of EPUB e-book:

• Instantiate Parser object for the initial e-book;
• Call GetDocumentInfo method and obtain IDocumentInfo object with page count;
• Call GetText(pageIndex) method with the page index and obtain TextReader object;
• Read a text from reader.

The following example demonstrates how to extract a text from the page of EPUB e-book:

// Create an instance of Parser class
using(Parser parser = new Parser(filePath))
{
    // Get the document info
    IDocumentInfo documentInfo = parser.GetDocumentInfo();
   
    // Iterate over pages
    for(int p = 0; p < documentInfo.PageCount; p++)
    {
        // Print a page number 
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Page {0}/{1}", p + 1, documentInfo.PageCount));
   
        // Extract a text into the reader
        using(TextReader reader = parser.GetText(p))
        {
            // Print a text from the e-book
            Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
        }
    }
}

GroupDocs.Parser also allows to extract a text from EPUB e-books as HTML, Markdown and formatted plain text. For more details, see Extract Formatted Text.

Here are the steps to extract a text from EPUB e-book as HTML:

• Instantiate Parser object for the initial e-book;
• Call GetFormattedText method and obtain TextReader object;
• Read a text from reader.

The following example shows how to extract a text from EPUB e-book as HTML:

// Create an instance of Parser class
using (Parser parser = new Parser(filePath))
{
    // Extract a formatted text into the reader
    using (TextReader reader = parser.GetFormattedText(new FormattedTextOptions(FormattedTextMode.Html)))
    {
        // Print a formatted text from the e-book
        Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
    }
}

More resources

GitHub examples

You may easily run the code above and see the feature in action in our GitHub examples:

• GroupDocs.Parser for .NET examples
• GroupDocs.Parser for Java examples

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