Class PhoneExtractingContentHandler

All Implemented Interfaces:
ContentHandler, DTDHandler, EntityResolver, ErrorHandler

public class PhoneExtractingContentHandler extends ContentHandlerDecorator
Class used to extract phone numbers while parsing.

Every time a document is parsed in Tika, the content is split into SAX events. Those SAX events are handled by a ContentHandler. You can think of these events as marking a tag in an HTML file. Once you're finished parsing, you can call handler.toString(), for example, to get the text contents of the file. On the other hand, any of the metadata of the file will be added to the Metadata object passed in during the parse() call. So, the Parser class sends metadata to the Metadata object and content to the ContentHandler.

This class is an example of how to combine a ContentHandler and a Metadata. As content is passed to the handler, we first check to see if it matches a textual pattern for a phone number. If the extracted content is a phone number, we add it to the metadata under the key "phonenumbers". So, if you used this ContentHandler when you parsed a document, then called metadata.getValues("phonenumbers"), you would get an array of Strings of phone numbers found in the document.

Please see the PhoneExtractingContentHandlerTest for an example of how to use this class.

  • Constructor Details

    • PhoneExtractingContentHandler

      public PhoneExtractingContentHandler(ContentHandler handler, Metadata metadata)
      Creates a decorator for the given SAX event handler and Metadata object.
      Parameters:
      handler - SAX event handler to be decorated
    • PhoneExtractingContentHandler

      protected PhoneExtractingContentHandler()
      Creates a decorator that by default forwards incoming SAX events to a dummy content handler that simply ignores all the events. Subclasses should use the ContentHandlerDecorator.setContentHandler(ContentHandler) method to switch to a more usable underlying content handler. Also creates a dummy Metadata object to store phone numbers in.
  • Method Details

    • characters

      public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length) throws SAXException
      The characters method is called whenever a Parser wants to pass raw... characters to the ContentHandler. But, sometimes, phone numbers are split accross different calls to characters, depending on the specific Parser used. So, we simply add all characters to a StringBuilder and analyze it once the document is finished.
      Specified by:
      characters in interface ContentHandler
      Overrides:
      characters in class ContentHandlerDecorator
      Throws:
      SAXException
    • endDocument

      public void endDocument() throws SAXException
      This method is called whenever the Parser is done parsing the file. So, we check the output for any phone numbers.
      Specified by:
      endDocument in interface ContentHandler
      Overrides:
      endDocument in class ContentHandlerDecorator
      Throws:
      SAXException