PDFx

Introduction

Extract metadata and links from a local or remote PDF, and optionally download all referenced PDFs.

Features

• Extract metadata and PDF URLs from a given PDF
• Download all PDFs referenced in the original PDF
• Works with local and online pdfs
• Use as command-line tool or Python package
• Compatible with Python 2 and 3

Getting Started

Grab a copy of the code with easy_install or pip, and run it:

$ easy_install -U pdfx
...
$ pdfx <pdf-file-or-url>

Run pdfx -h to see the help output:

$ pdfx -h
usage: pdfx [-h] [-d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY] [-j] [-v] [--debug] [--version] pdf

Get infos and links from a PDF, and optionallydownload all referenced PDFs.
See http://www.metachris.com/pdfx for more information.

positional arguments:
  pdf                   Filename or URL of a PDF file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, --download-pdfs OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
                        Download all referenced PDFs into specified directory
  -j, --json            Output infos as json (instead of plain text)
  -v, --verbose         Print all urls (instead of only PDF urls)
  --debug               Output debug infos
  --version             show program's version number and exit

Examples

Lets take a look at this paper: https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf:

$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf
Document infos:
- CreationDate = D:20150821110623-04'00'
- Creator = LaTeX with hyperref package
- ModDate = D:20150821110805-04'00'
- PTEX.Fullbanner = This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian) kpathsea version 6.1.1
- Pages = 13
- Producer = pdfTeX-1.40.14
- Title = Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice
- Trapped = False

17 PDF URLs:
- http://cr.yp.to/factorization/smoothparts-20040510.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35671.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35529.pdf
- http://cryptome.org/2013/08/spy-budget-fy13.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35514.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35509.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35533.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35519.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35522.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35513.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35528.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35526.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35517.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35527.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35520.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35551.pdf

Download all referenced pdfs with ``-d`` (for download-pdfs) to the specified directory (eg. ./):

$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf -d ./
Document infos:
- CreationDate = D:20150821110623-04'00'
- Creator = LaTeX with hyperref package
- ModDate = D:20150821110805-04'00'
- PTEX.Fullbanner = This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian) kpathsea version 6.1.1
- Pages = 13
- Producer = pdfTeX-1.40.14
- Title = Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice
- Trapped = False

17 PDF URLs:
- http://cr.yp.to/factorization/smoothparts-20040510.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35671.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35529.pdf
- http://cryptome.org/2013/08/spy-budget-fy13.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35514.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35509.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35533.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35519.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35522.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35513.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35528.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35526.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35517.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35527.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35520.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35551.pdf

Downloading 17 pdfs to './'...
All done!

Usage as Python library

>>> import pdfx
>>> pdf = pdfx.PDFx("filename-or-url.pdf")
>>> print(pdf.get_metadata())
>>> pdf.analyze_text()
>>> print(pdf.get_urls())
>>> pdf.download_pdfs("target-directory")

TODO

• Kivy cross-platform GUI
• Work with other targets than only PDF (eg. html, text, etc)

Various

• Author: Chris Hager <chris@linuxuser.at>
• Homepage: http://www.metachris.com/pdfx
• License: Apache

Feedback, ideas and pull requests are welcome!