How do I extract query parameters from a URL string in PHP?

You can use parse_url and parse_str like this:

$query = parse_url('http://www.example.com?test=123&random=abc', PHP_URL_QUERY);
parse_str($query, $params);
$test = $params['test'];

parse_url allows to split an URL in different parts (scheme, host, path, query, etc); here we use it to get only the query (test=123&random=abc). Then we can parse the query with parse_str.

If you're using *nix, have you tried XPDF?

There is a blog post here about how someone has used it for a customer of their's - whether it will be of any help I'm unsure.

EDIT: There seems to be some code here that could help - a simple class that reads a PDF into plaintext. Unsure if it supports decryption.

EDIT2: There are also a number of resources in PHP documentation that may help you. Click.

EDIT3: FPDF and FPDI may also help. Probably your best bet after some research.

For this PHP regex:

$str = preg_replace ( '{(.)1+}', '$1', $str );
$str = preg_replace ( '{[ '-_()]}', '', $str )

In Java:

str = str.replaceAll("(.)\1+", "$1");
str = str.replaceAll("[ '-_\(\)]", "");

I suggest you to provide your input and expected output then you will get better answers on how it can be done in PHP and/or Java.