Extractors are declared in the manitou-mdx configuration file with the index_words_extractors multi-line entry. Each line associates an extractor to a MIME type.

Example:

[mailbox@domain.tld]
index_words_extractors = application/pdf: /opt/scripts/pdf2text \
   application/msword: /opt/scripts/word2text

The extractors are generally shell scripts wrapping a call to a converter program like antiword for MS-Word documents, pdftotext from poppler, or unoconv for OpenOffice documents.

Here is a collection of sample extractors for common file formats:

MIME-type: application/msword

manitou-doc-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-doc file to stdout-txt 
# use antiword from antiword package
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.doc) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
antiword -i1 "$tmpfile" || exit 1
 
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

manitou-docx-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-docx file to stdout-txt 
# use unoconv from unoconv package
# TODO: handle unoconv deadlock (set a background and timeout)
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.docx) || exit 1
tmpfile2=$(tempfile --suffix=.txt) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile' '$tmpfile2'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
unoconv -d=document -f txt "$tmpfile" "$tmpfile2" || exit 1
cat "$tmpfile2"
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet

manitou-ods-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-ods file to stdout-txt 
# use unoconv from unoconv package
# TODO: handle unoconv deadlock (set a background and timeout)
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.ods) || exit 1
tmpfile2=$(tempfile --suffix=.csv) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile' '$tmpfile2'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
unoconv -d=document -f csv "$tmpfile" "$tmpfile2" || exit 1
cat "$tmpfile2"
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text

manitou-odt-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-odt file to stdout-txt 
# use unoconv from unoconv package
# TODO: handle unoconv deadlock (set a background and timeout)
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.odt) || exit 1
tmpfile2=$(tempfile --suffix=.txt) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile' '$tmpfile2'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
unoconv -d=document -f txt "$tmpfile" "$tmpfile2" || exit 1
cat "$tmpfile2"
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-Type: application/pdf

manitou-pdf-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-pdf file to stdout-txt 
# use pdftotext from poppler-utils package
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.pdf) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
pdftotext -q "$tmpfile" - || exit 1
 
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel

manitou-xls-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-xls file to stdout-txt 
# use unoconv from unoconv package
# TODO: handle unoconv deadlock (set a background and timeout)
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.xls) || exit 1
tmpfile2=$(tempfile --suffix=.csv) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile' '$tmpfile2'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
unoconv -d=document -f csv "$tmpfile" "$tmpfile2" || exit 1
cat "$tmpfile2"
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0

MIME-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet

manitou-xlsx-indexer

#!/bin/sh
# convert a stdin-xlsx file to stdout-txt 
# use unoconv from unoconv package
# TODO: handle unoconv deadlock (set a background and timeout)
tmpfile=$(tempfile --suffix=.xlsx) || exit 1
tmpfile2=$(tempfile --suffix=.csv) || exit 1
trap "rm -f -- '$tmpfile' '$tmpfile2'" EXIT
cat >>$tmpfile
unoconv -d=document -f csv "$tmpfile" "$tmpfile2" || exit 1
cat "$tmpfile2"
rm -f -- "$tmpfile"
trap - EXIT
exit 0