pdftotext

Simple PDF text extraction

import pdftotext

# Load your PDF
with open("lorem_ipsum.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)

# If it's password-protected
with open("secure.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f, "secret")

# How many pages?
print(len(pdf))

# Iterate over all the pages
for page in pdf:
    print(page)

# Read some individual pages
print(pdf[0])
print(pdf[1])

# Read all the text into one string
print("\n\n".join(pdf))

OS Dependencies

These instructions assume you're using Python 3 on a recent OS. Package names may differ for Python 2 or for an older OS.

Debian, Ubuntu, and friends

sudo apt install build-essential libpoppler-cpp-dev pkg-config python3-dev

Fedora, Red Hat, and friends

sudo yum install gcc-c++ pkgconfig poppler-cpp-devel python3-devel

macOS

brew install pkg-config poppler python

Windows

Currently tested only when using conda:

• Install the Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools
• Install poppler through conda:

  conda install -c conda-forge poppler
  

Install

pip install pdftotext