Not directly CF related, but I was wondering if there is a way to use the Acrobat document comparison tool inside a website. We want to be able to upload some documents to the webserver and let subscribers pick two, maybe more, to compare the changes. I saw the API to use the viewer in a site and I saw the comparison tool, but not a way to use the tool in a site. Thanks for any help.

Not quite sure but there is this Java lib you could probably achieve a similar result: https://github.com/red6/pdfcompare

That does a pixel comparison. I was looking for a text comparison. But thank you.

Paging @raymondcamden

This lib can extract text from PDFs and then you can handle comparisons: https://github.com/apache/pdfbox

@Patrick that could be an option. Given the size of my to-do list, I was hoping for a pre-packaged, and not necessarily free, solution.

There are endless 3rd party services out there you can toss stuff to and get results back. Just come at a cost.

Any you have tried and could recommend?

not saying a third party lib isn't useful, but fwiw you can extract pdf text with built in cfpdf functionality, so nothing external would be required for what you're describing

My goal was to not have to write the comparison code myself, but that remains an option.

what changes are you comparing, ANY changes or specific changes in specific blocks?

Any changes, to highlight anything moved, removed, reworded, whatever.

and your intention is to show those differences as a text diff or as pdfs highlighting the differences?

The preference is pdf with highlighted changes, but pulling out text could work. My template was the Acrobat comparison tool, but that can't be embedded in a site.

didn't read all the way through it, but maybe have a look at the sdk underying this: https://webviewer-demo.foxit.com/overlay-comparison

That does look promising. Thanks for the help. My searches hadn't found that one yet.

our APIs dont cover comparison. in theory, you can use Extract, but its going to be a lot of work

To follow up on this thread, Draftable did exactly what we needed. It wasn't cheap, but solved the problem.