using pdf files and their metadata for Azure cognitive search - azure

Question

I'm uploading hundreds of PDF files into blob storage to be used in Azure cognitive search.
I would like the user to be able to get the title and author of these PDF files on top of their search results.
I'm not sure how the metadata for these PDF files (e.g., 'author', 'date', 'title') can be added (e.g., as a json file) to the blob storage.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

I'm from the Microsoft for Founders Hub team. Azure blob storage has blob properties and metadata built into it! You can view and add metadata through various tools including the Azure Portal, CLI, PowerShell, or the REST API. To learn more, here's a great area to get started:
View Blob Properties and Meta Data using Azure Tools
Add Blob Metadata using Azure tools and code

Answer 2

If you would like the title, author and date to be returned in your search results, you can add them to the index. Thus, you can create fields called author, title and date in your index. Then, in the indexer, you can return the specific metadata for PDF's, as mentioned here, like this:
indexer= {
"name":...,
"dataSourceName":...,
"targetIndexName":...,
"skillsetName":...,
"fieldMappings": [
{
....
},
{
"sourceFieldName": "metadata_title",
"targetFieldName": "title"
},
{
"sourceFieldName": "metadata_creation_date",
"targetFieldName": "date"
},
{
"sourceFieldName": "metadata_author",
"targetFieldName": "author"
}
],
"outputFieldMappings": [
...
]
...
}
Where the "..." means that you add your own code.
Of course, the PDF's should have the metadata, otherwise it will return an empty value [].
You can then access the fields like you'd normally do for content for example.
NOTE: if you happen to put a null mappingFunction for the title, date and author, you might also get a []. If you don't use it, best remove it.