I’m working on a project where I need to extract text content from a PDF node using PDFBox. Here’s the code snippet I’m currently using:

pdDocument = PDDocument.load(new File(path));

public void getLabels() {
    PDDocumentCatalog catalog = pdDocument.getDocumentCatalog();
    PDStructureTreeRoot treeRoot = catalog.getStructureTreeRoot();

    if (treeRoot != null) {
        String indent = "";
        for (Object obj : treeRoot.getKids()) {
            if (obj instanceof PDStructureElement) {
                addLabels((PDStructureElement) obj, indent);
            }
        }
    }
}

void addLabels(PDStructureElement element, String indent) {

    if (element.getStructureType().startsWith("H")) {
        checkHeaderHierarchy(element, 0); 
    }

    if (element.getStructureType().equalsIgnoreCase("Figure")) {
        String altText = element.getAlternateDescription();
        labels.add(indent + element.getStructureType() + " - " + altText);
        if (altText == null || altText.isEmpty()) {
            errors.add("Image without alternative text on page: " + getPageNumber(element.getPage()));
        }
    } else {
        labels.add(indent + element.getStructureType() + " - " + element.getTitle());
    }
    for (Object obj : element.getKids()) {
        if (obj instanceof PDStructureElement) {
            addLabels((PDStructureElement) obj, indent + "  ");
        }
    }
}

I’ve attempted to use element.getActualText() to retrieve the text content, but it always returns null regardless of the node’s content. Is there any other method or workaround I can use to achieve this?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!