EXTRACTTEXT

Overview

The EXTRACTTEXT workflow application extracts text content from an input file (.pdf, .docx, .txt, .xml, .htm, .html, or .md) and returns the extracted text and its length. It supports optional parameters for maximum file size, trimming, and text normalization (Unix-style line breaks).

Parameters

Required parameters

Parameter	Type	Direction	Description
FILE	FILE	IN	The file from which to extract the text (must be .pdf, .docx, .txt, .xml, .htm, .html, or .md)
TEXT	TEXT	OUT	The extracted (and possibly normalized/trimmed) text
LENGTH	NUMERIC	OUT	The length (number of characters) of the extracted text

Optional parameters

Parameter	Type	Direction	Description
MAX_FILE_SIZE	NUMERIC	IN	Maximum allowed file size in MB
TRIM_SIZE	NUMERIC	IN	Maximum number of characters to keep from the extracted text
NORMALIZE	TEXT	IN	Whether to normalize line endings Possible values: Y N true false

Supported file types

Documents must be provided in one of the following formats. The system validates file format before processing extraction.

Format	Extension	Description
PDF	.pdf	Portable Document Format Text is extracted from all pages, including form fields.
Word	.docx	Microsoft Word documents (Office Open XML) Text is extracted from paragraphs, tables, headers, footers, and text boxes.
Plain text	.txt	Plain text files Content is returned as-is.
XML	.xml	XML documents All text content from XML nodes is extracted; element tags are stripped. Processing is secured against XXE (XML External Entity) attacks.
HTML	.html, .htm	HTML documents Readable text is extracted after removing <script>, <style>, and <noscript> elements. <br> tags are converted to line breaks. HTML entities (e.g., &amp;, &lt;, &#169;) are decoded to their characters. Whitespace is normalized.
Markdown	.md	Markdown files Content is returned as-is, preserving all markdown syntax (headings, links, formatting, etc.). Markdown is human-readable and well-suited for semantic search without syntax stripping.

Error messages

Error message	Cause
ExtractText: File must be a PDF, DOCX, TXT, XML, HTM, HTML or MD.	File extension is not one of the supported types
XML parsing error (e.g. DtdProcessing is set to Prohibit)	XML file contains a DTD declaration (blocked for security)
XML parsing error (e.g. Data at the root level is invalid)	XML file is malformed or not valid XML