Hi,
Today I was faced with an interesting question regarding SharePoint’s search capabilities. I have a need to customize the search results as to display content of PDF files returned from the search in a specific format.
Suppose there is a document library of patient records in PDF format. Each PDF would contain (amongst other information) the patient ID, DOB, address, and hair colour. Now, if I searched for a complete or partial patient ID I would like the results to display as follows:
123431
DOB: 10/30/1973
Address: 123 Main Street, Mainsville, MA
Hair Color: Black
582654
DOB: 11/07/2001
Address: 234 Front Street, Toronto, ON
Hair Color: Blonde
The Patient ID would be found inside the PDF and would be a link to the document. The rest other fields would be picked-up from inside the PDF. I know that the search results can be formatted using XSLT in SharePoint 2010 and using the GUI in SharePoint 2013. However, can SharePoint be set up to read data from inside the result documents and display it in the results?
Thanks,
-Haniel
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the response. The story gets a bit more interesting. The documents will actually be stored in LiveLink and the SharePoint search will need to access the documents there. I need to find out about the structure and consistency of the metadata in the PDF’s. One alternative may be to have some process external to SharePoint/LiveLink read the PDF and generate an XML file with all the metadata. When the PDF is uploaded into LiveLink, the XML would be associated with it and then when SharePoint performs the search, the results page would look at the XML and display the metadata captured in it.
Regards,
-Haniel
