Search attachments

Please note: This module is no longer supported. Drupal 6 users are encouraged to use Search Files, which incorporates much of the funcationality of Search Attachments.

search_attachments.module allows searching the text of PDF, MS Word, plain text, and other types of files attached to nodes. In order to extract the text from attached files, this module calls 'helper apps' such as cat and pdftotext. Drupal administrators can configure any helpers they like.

Currently, search_attachments.module is available for Drupal 4.7.x and 5.x. The 4.7.x version will get no new features, but the 5.x version is being maintained and expanded. All versions have been tested on Linux and Mac OS X. No problems have been reported with sites running on Windows servers, other than the relatively low number of helper apps available for that platform.

See the homepage for downloads and more info. Version 5.x of this module contains a large number of feature additions since 4.7.x, including the ability to configure arbitrary helpers, the ability to use any file management module through a mechanism called 'drivers', and more admin configuration options.

If you need Drupal 6.x compatibility you may want to consider using Search Files, which offers a subset of search_attachments' functionality. Search_attachments will be ported to Drupal 6 shortly.

Update, 2008-02-21: Version 5.x-4-dev of this module, which incorporates some major changes, is now available from its home page. I have attempted to create a release package here on d.o. but have experienced nothing but grief doing so. I'll continue to work on moving the releases to d.o.