php pdfparser is not working for pdf version 1.7 - php

Question

I'm using pdfparser to parse text from a pdf file. for old version pdf files it is working but for new version pdf files this parser is not working.
my pdf version is 1.7
<?php
include 'vendor/autoload.php';
// Parse pdf file and build necessary objects.
$parser = new Smalot\PdfParser\Parser();
$pdf = $parser->parseFile('sample.pdf');
// Retrieve all pages from the pdf file.
$pages = $pdf->getPages();
// Loop over each page to extract text.
$content=array();
foreach ($pages as $page) {
$content[]= $page->getTextArray();
echo"<pre>";
print_r($content);
}

Answer 1

I experienced the same behaviour!
Now I use a tool to check the pdf version before I try to parse it. If it is not 1.4 I convert it to 1.4 and parse it then.
Here is a php library for that if needed: https://github.com/xthiago/pdf-version-converter
Code example:
function searchablePdfParser($systemPath) {
//we save the file to a temporay file because we might need to convert it.
$tempPath = getPathWithIdAndTimestamp($systemPath) . 'tmp.pdf';
copy($systemPath, $tempPath);
//check whether it needs to be converted and convert it if required
$guesser = new RegexGuesser();
$pdfVersion = $guesser->guess($tempPath); // will print something like '1.4'
if ( $pdfVersion != '1.4' ) {
$command = new GhostscriptConverterCommand();
$filesystem = new Filesystem();
$converter = new GhostscriptConverter($command, $filesystem);
$converter->convert($tempPath, '1.4');
}
//parse the original file or the converted file if it hadn't been a pdf 1.4 version
$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser();
$pdf = $parser->parseFile($tempPath);
$text = $pdf->getText();
unlink($tempPath);
if ( strlen($text) < 30 ) {
return '';
}
return $text;
}