How do I use pdfminer as a library

I am trying to get text data from a pdf using pdfminer. I am able to extract this data to a .txt file successfully with the pdfminer command line tool pdf2txt.py. I currently do this and then use a python script to clean up the .txt file. I would like to incorporate the pdf extract process into the script and save myself a step.

I thought I was on to something when I found this link, but I didn't have success with any of the solutions. Perhaps the function listed there needs to be updated again because I am using a newer version of pdfminer.

I also tried the function shown here, but it also did not work.

Another approach I tried was to call the script within a script using os.system. This was also unsuccessful.

I am using Python version 2.7.1 and pdfminer version 20110227.

Here is a new solution that works with the latest version:

from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from cStringIO import StringIO

def convert_pdf_to_txt(path):
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    retstr = StringIO()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, retstr, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)
    fp = file(path, 'rb')
    interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)
    password = ""
    maxpages = 0
    caching = True
    pagenos=set()
    for page in PDFPage.get_pages(fp, pagenos, maxpages=maxpages, password=password,caching=caching, check_extractable=True):
        interpreter.process_page(page)
    fp.close()
    device.close()
    str = retstr.getvalue()
    retstr.close()
    return str

Here is a cleaned up version I finally produced that worked for me. The following just simply returns the string in a PDF, given its filename. I hope this saves someone time.

from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, process_pdf
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from cStringIO import StringIO

def convert_pdf(path):

    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    retstr = StringIO()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, retstr, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)

    fp = file(path, 'rb')
    process_pdf(rsrcmgr, device, fp)
    fp.close()
    device.close()

    str = retstr.getvalue()
    retstr.close()
    return str

This solution was valid until API changes in November 2013.

I know it is poor taste to answer your own question, but I think I may have figured this out and I don't want anyone else to waste their time looking for a solution to my problem.

I followed the suggestion in a one of the links posted in my question and re-purposed the current pdf2txt.py script included with pdfminer. Here is the function in case it is useful to anyone else. Thanks to the user skyl for posting that answer, all I had to to was make a couple of changes to make it work with the current version of pdfminer.

This function take a pdf and creates a .txt file in the same directory with the same name.

def convert_pdf(path, outtype='txt', opts={}):
import sys
from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFDocument, PDFParser
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter, process_pdf
from pdfminer.pdfdevice import PDFDevice, TagExtractor
from pdfminer.converter import XMLConverter, HTMLConverter, TextConverter
from pdfminer.cmapdb import CMapDB
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
import getopt

outfile = path[:-3] + outtype
outdir = '/'.join(path.split('/')[:-1])

# debug option
debug = 0
# input option
password = ''
pagenos = set()
maxpages = 0
# output option
# ?outfile = None
# ?outtype = None
outdir = None
#layoutmode = 'normal'
codec = 'utf-8'
pageno = 1
scale = 1
showpageno = True
laparams = LAParams()
for (k, v) in opts:
    if k == '-d': debug += 1
    elif k == '-p': pagenos.update( int(x)-1 for x in v.split(',') )
    elif k == '-m': maxpages = int(v)
    elif k == '-P': password = v
    elif k == '-o': outfile = v
    elif k == '-n': laparams = None
    elif k == '-A': laparams.all_texts = True
    elif k == '-V': laparams.detect_vertical = True
    elif k == '-M': laparams.char_margin = float(v)
    elif k == '-L': laparams.line_margin = float(v)
    elif k == '-W': laparams.word_margin = float(v)
    elif k == '-F': laparams.boxes_flow = float(v)
    elif k == '-Y': layoutmode = v
    elif k == '-O': outdir = v
    elif k == '-t': outtype = v
    elif k == '-c': codec = v
    elif k == '-s': scale = float(v)
#
#PDFDocument.debug = debug
#PDFParser.debug = debug
CMapDB.debug = debug
PDFResourceManager.debug = debug
PDFPageInterpreter.debug = debug
PDFDevice.debug = debug
#
rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()

outtype = 'text'

if outfile:
    outfp = file(outfile, 'w')
else:
    outfp = sys.stdout
device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, outfp, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)


fp = file(path, 'rb')
process_pdf(rsrcmgr, device, fp, pagenos, maxpages=maxpages, password=password,
                check_extractable=True)
fp.close()
device.close()
outfp.close()
return

This worked for me using the most recent version of pdfminer (as of September 2014):

from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFParser
from pdfminer.pdfdocument import PDFDocument
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFTextExtractionNotAllowed
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.pdfdevice import PDFDevice
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
import unicodedata, codecs
from io import StringIO

def getPDFText(pdfFilenamePath):
    retstr = StringIO()
    parser = PDFParser(open(pdfFilenamePath,'r'))
    try:
        document = PDFDocument(parser)
    except Exception as e:
        print(pdfFilenamePath,'is not a readable pdf')
        return ''
    if document.is_extractable:
        rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
        device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr,retstr, codec='ascii' , laparams = LAParams())
        interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)
        for page in PDFPage.create_pages(document):
            interpreter.process_page(page)
        return retstr.getvalue()
    else:
        print(pdfFilenamePath,"Warning: could not extract text from pdf file.")
        return ''

if __name__ == '__main__':
    words = getPDFText(path)

How do I use pdfminer as a library

Related

Recent Posts