Tiki.Net

A lightweight .NET library for content detection and text extraction, loosely inspired by Apache Tika. Tiki.Net is a native C# implementation — no IKVM, no Java, no bloat. It covers the most common file formats with strongly-typed results and a modern async API.

Why Tiki.Net?

• Native .NET — pure C#, no Java bridge, no 23 MB IKVM blob
• Strongly-typed results — get TikiDocument, TikiPhoto, TikiMusic objects with real properties, not string dictionaries
• Lightweight — core library is 57 KB; install only the parser packages you need
• Modern — async/await, CancellationToken, nullable reference types, net8.0+
• Modular — split NuGet packages keep your dependency footprint small

Installation

# Core (includes text, XML, CSV, JSON parsing and MIME detection)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net

# Parser packages (install only what you need)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Pdf       # PDF (via PdfPig)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Office    # DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT (via OpenXml SDK)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Html      # HTML (via AngleSharp)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Media     # MP3, FLAC, WAV, MP4, AVI, MKV, WMV (via TagLibSharp)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Email     # EML (zero dependencies)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Image     # JPEG, PNG, TIFF EXIF metadata (via MetadataExtractor)
dotnet add package Tiki.Net.Parsers.Rtf       # RTF (via RtfPipe)

Usage

Basic text extraction

using Tiki;

var tiki = new Tiki.Tiki();

string text = await tiki.ParseToStringAsync("document.pdf");

Strongly-typed parsing

using Tiki;
using Tiki.Documents;

var tiki = new TikiEngine();
var result = await tiki.ParseAsync("report.docx");

if (result is TikiDocument doc)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Title: {doc.Title}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Author: {doc.Authors?.FirstOrDefault()}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Pages: {doc.PageCount}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Company: {doc.Company}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Content: {doc.Content[..200]}...");
}

Image metadata

var result = await tiki.ParseAsync("photo.jpg");

if (result is TikiPhoto photo)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Camera: {photo.CameraManufacturer} {photo.CameraModel}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Date Taken: {photo.DateTaken}");
    Console.WriteLine($"ISO: {photo.IsoSpeed}, f/{photo.FNumber}");
    Console.WriteLine($"GPS: {photo.Latitude}, {photo.Longitude}");
}

Music metadata

var result = await tiki.ParseAsync("song.mp3");

if (result is TikiMusic music)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Artist: {music.Artist}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Album: {music.Album}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Track: {music.TrackNumber}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Duration: {music.Duration}");
}

Video metadata

var result = await tiki.ParseAsync("movie.mp4");

if (result is TikiVideo video)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Resolution: {video.Width}x{video.Height}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Duration: {video.Duration}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Codec: {video.VideoCodec}");
}

Email parsing

var result = await tiki.ParseAsync("message.eml");

if (result is TikiMessage msg)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"From: {msg.FromName} <{msg.FromAddress}>");
    Console.WriteLine($"To: {string.Join(", ", msg.ToAddresses ?? [])}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Subject: {msg.Subject}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Body: {msg.Content}");
}

MIME type detection

var mediaType = await tiki.DetectAsync("unknown-file.bin");
Console.WriteLine(mediaType); // e.g. "application/pdf"

Custom configuration

using Tiki;
using Tiki.Parsers.Pdf;
using Tiki.Parsers.Html;
using Tiki.Parsers.Media;

var config = TikiConfig.CreateBuilder()
    .AddPdfParser()
    .AddHtmlParser()
    .AddMediaParser()
    .Build();

var tiki = new Tiki.Tiki(config);

Streaming and cancellation

using var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30));
using var stream = File.OpenRead("large-document.pdf");

var result = await tiki.ParseAsync(stream, cts.Token);

Result Type Hierarchy

TikiFile                         Plain text, source code, markdown
├── TikiData                     JSON, XML, XAML, YAML, TOML, CSV, INI
├── TikiOfficeDocument (abstract)
│   ├── TikiDocument             PDF, DOCX, DOC, RTF, ODT
│   ├── TikiSpreadsheet          XLSX
│   └── TikiPresentation         PPTX
├── TikiMedia (abstract)
│   ├── TikiAudio
│   │   └── TikiMusic            MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG
│   └── TikiVideo                MP4, AVI, MKV, MOV, WMV
├── TikiPhoto                    JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, WebP
├── TikiMessage                  EML
└── TikiWebPage                  HTML

Common properties on TikiFile: Content, MediaType, Title, Authors, DateCreated, DateModified, Description, Keywords, ContentLength

License

MIT