This sample program helps you work with a pdf file over the net and extract its contents

PlayWithPDF.java

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URISyntaxException;
import java.net.URL;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdfparser.PDFParser;
import org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFTextStripper;

public class PlayWithPDF {

	/**
	 * @param args
	 * @throws URISyntaxException 
	 * @throws IOException 
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) throws URISyntaxException, IOException {
		URL url = new URL("http://illiad.evms.edu/sample.pdf");
		System.out.println(getTextFromPDF(url));
	}
	
	public static String getTextFromPDF(URL url) throws IOException{
		BufferedInputStream fileToParse = new BufferedInputStream(url.openStream());
		PDFParser parser = new PDFParser(fileToParse);
		parser.parse();
		String text = new PDFTextStripper().getText(parser.getPDDocument());
		System.out.println(text);
		parser.getPDDocument().close();
		return text;
	}

}

Make sure that the following is added up as a Maven dependency for this to work.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
        <artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
        <version>1.1.0</version>
    </dependency>