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Chart Parser

Parses horse racing result charts into JSON/CSV/Java...

TL;DR

When given an Equibase result chart PDF file e.g.

sample-chart-img

chart-parser can turn it into machine-readable formats, like JSON, e.g.

sample-json

or CSV, e.g.

sample-csv

or even to be used as code in an SDK:

sample-code

How it works

PDFs are parsed using a customized PDFTextStripper instance from Apache PDFBox.

It works by extracting out the x-y position, scale, font size, and unicode value of each character within the PDF file into CSV, and determining the relevant field that text would belong to.

Highlights

  • The entire PDF is parsed; everything you see in the chart can be used, including race conditions, lengths ahead/behind at each point of call, fractional times, wagering payoffs and pools, footnotes etc.

  • Full race card PDFs containing multiple races (including those spread over multiple pages) can be parsed.

  • An SDK comes out-of-the-box that supports full serialization to and from a JSON API.

  • Textual descriptions of race distances are converted to feet e.g. "Six Furlongs" becomes 3,960.

  • Values for lengths ahead/behind are converted to decimal formats.

  • The software adds additional features such as attempting to lookup the last-raced track details, displaying the day of the week and of the year that a race took place, outlining each medication and equipment used, providing a normalized "X-to-1" odds determination for all wagering payoffs, and calculating estimated individual fractional and splits at each fraction for each starter in a race.

  • Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, Arabian and Mixed breed races are all supported.

  • The software handles edge-case scenarios such as dead-heats, walkovers, non-betting races, disqualifications (including adjusting final winning positions), cancellations, claiming price information etc.

How to use

Handycapper is provided as a sample application to parse and convert PDF charts to/from JSON.

Parsing a PDF file is simple and can be done in one-line e.g.:

List<RaceResult> raceResults = ChartParser.create().parse(Paths.get("ARP_2016-07-24_race-charts.pdf").toFile());

Compiling

IMPORTANT: This project relies on enabling the Java 8 method parameter reflection feature (-parameters) in your JVM settings e.g.

intellij-settings

chart-parser is a Maven-based Java open-source project. Running mvn clean install will compile the code, run all tests, and install the built artificat to the local repository.

Notes

This software is open-source and released under the MIT License.

This project contains a single sample Equibase PDF chart included for testing, educational and demonstration purposes only.

It is recommended users of this software be aware of the conditions on the PDF charts that may apply.