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All of you must be familiar with what PDFs are. In fact, they are one of the most important and widely used digital media. PDF stands for
Portable Document Format. It uses .pdf extension. It is used to present and exchange documents reliably, independent of software, hardware, or operating system.
Python package PyPDF can be used to achieve what we want (text extraction), although it can do more than what we need. This package can also be used to
generate, decrypting and merging PDF files.
Note: For more information, refer to Working with PDF files in Python
Installation
To install this package type the below command in the terminal.
pip install PyPDF2
Example:
Input PDF:
import PyPDF2
pdfFileObj = open('example.pdf', 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
print(pdfReader.numPages)
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
print(pageObj.extractText())
pdfFileObj.close()
Output:
Let us try to understand the above code in chunks:
pdfFileObj = open('example.pdf', 'rb')We opened the example.pdf in binary mode. and saved the file object as pdfFileObj.
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
Here, we create an object of PdfFileReader class of PyPDF2 module and pass the pdf file object & get
a pdf reader object.
print(pdfReader.numPages)
numPages property gives the number of pages in the pdf file. For example, in our case, it is 20 (see first line of output).
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
Now, we create an object of PageObject class of PyPDF2 module. pdf reader object has function getPage() which takes page number (starting form index 0) as argument and returns the page object.
print(pageObj.extractText())
Page object has function
extractText() to extract text from the pdf page.
pdfFileObj.close()
At last, we close the pdf file object.
I am adding code to accomplish this: It is working fine for me:
# This works in python 3
# required python packages
# tabula-py==1.0.0
# PyPDF2==1.26.0
# Pillow==4.0.0
# pdfminer.six==20170720
import os
import shutil
import warnings
from io import StringIO
import requests
import tabula
from PIL import Image
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")
def download_file(url):
local_filename = url.split('/')[-1]
local_filename = local_filename.replace("%20", "_")
r = requests.get(url, stream=True)
print(r)
with open(local_filename, 'wb') as f:
shutil.copyfileobj(r.raw, f)
return local_filename
class PDFExtractor():
def __init__(self, url):
self.url = url
# Downloading File in local
def break_pdf(self, filename, start_page=-1, end_page=-1):
pdf_reader = PdfFileReader(open(filename, "rb"))
# Reading each pdf one by one
total_pages = pdf_reader.numPages
if start_page == -1:
start_page = 0
elif start_page < 1 or start_page > total_pages:
return "Start Page Selection Is Wrong"
else:
start_page = start_page - 1
if end_page == -1:
end_page = total_pages
elif end_page < 1 or end_page > total_pages - 1:
return "End Page Selection Is Wrong"
else:
end_page = end_page
for i in range(start_page, end_page):
output = PdfFileWriter()
output.addPage(pdf_reader.getPage(i))
with open(str(i + 1) + "_" + filename, "wb") as outputStream:
output.write(outputStream)
def extract_text_algo_1(self, file):
pdf_reader = PdfFileReader(open(file, 'rb'))
# creating a page object
pageObj = pdf_reader.getPage(0)
# extracting extract_text from page
text = pageObj.extractText()
text = text.replace("\n", "").replace("\t", "")
return text
def extract_text_algo_2(self, file):
pdfResourceManager = PDFResourceManager()
retstr = StringIO()
la_params = LAParams()
device = TextConverter(pdfResourceManager, retstr, codec='utf-8', laparams=la_params)
fp = open(file, 'rb')
interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(pdfResourceManager, device)
password = ""
max_pages = 0
caching = True
page_num = set()
for page in PDFPage.get_pages(fp, page_num, maxpages=max_pages, password=password, caching=caching,
check_extractable=True):
interpreter.process_page(page)
text = retstr.getvalue()
text = text.replace("\t", "").replace("\n", "")
fp.close()
device.close()
retstr.close()
return text
def extract_text(self, file):
text1 = self.extract_text_algo_1(file)
text2 = self.extract_text_algo_2(file)
if len(text2) > len(str(text1)):
return text2
else:
return text1
def extarct_table(self, file):
# Read pdf into DataFrame
try:
df = tabula.read_pdf(file, output_format="csv")
except:
print("Error Reading Table")
return
print("\nPrinting Table Content: \n", df)
print("\nDone Printing Table Content\n")
def tiff_header_for_CCITT(self, width, height, img_size, CCITT_group=4):
tiff_header_struct = '<' + '2s' + 'h' + 'l' + 'h' + 'hhll' * 8 + 'h'
return struct.pack(tiff_header_struct,
b'II', # Byte order indication: Little indian
42, # Version number (always 42)
8, # Offset to first IFD
8, # Number of tags in IFD
256, 4, 1, width, # ImageWidth, LONG, 1, width
257, 4, 1, height, # ImageLength, LONG, 1, lenght
258, 3, 1, 1, # BitsPerSample, SHORT, 1, 1
259, 3, 1, CCITT_group, # Compression, SHORT, 1, 4 = CCITT Group 4 fax encoding
262, 3, 1, 0, # Threshholding, SHORT, 1, 0 = WhiteIsZero
273, 4, 1, struct.calcsize(tiff_header_struct), # StripOffsets, LONG, 1, len of header
278, 4, 1, height, # RowsPerStrip, LONG, 1, lenght
279, 4, 1, img_size, # StripByteCounts, LONG, 1, size of extract_image
0 # last IFD
)
def extract_image(self, filename):
number = 1
pdf_reader = PdfFileReader(open(filename, 'rb'))
for i in range(0, pdf_reader.numPages):
page = pdf_reader.getPage(i)
try:
xObject = page['/Resources']['/XObject'].getObject()
except:
print("No XObject Found")
return
for obj in xObject:
try:
if xObject[obj]['/Subtype'] == '/Image':
size = (xObject[obj]['/Width'], xObject[obj]['/Height'])
data = xObject[obj]._data
if xObject[obj]['/ColorSpace'] == '/DeviceRGB':
mode = "RGB"
else:
mode = "P"
image_name = filename.split(".")[0] + str(number)
print(xObject[obj]['/Filter'])
if xObject[obj]['/Filter'] == '/FlateDecode':
data = xObject[obj].getData()
img = Image.frombytes(mode, size, data)
img.save(image_name + "_Flate.png")
# save_to_s3(imagename + "_Flate.png")
print("Image_Saved")
number += 1
elif xObject[obj]['/Filter'] == '/DCTDecode':
img = open(image_name + "_DCT.jpg", "wb")
img.write(data)
# save_to_s3(imagename + "_DCT.jpg")
img.close()
number += 1
elif xObject[obj]['/Filter'] == '/JPXDecode':
img = open(image_name + "_JPX.jp2", "wb")
img.write(data)
# save_to_s3(imagename + "_JPX.jp2")
img.close()
number += 1
elif xObject[obj]['/Filter'] == '/CCITTFaxDecode':
if xObject[obj]['/DecodeParms']['/K'] == -1:
CCITT_group = 4
else:
CCITT_group = 3
width = xObject[obj]['/Width']
height = xObject[obj]['/Height']
data = xObject[obj]._data # sorry, getData() does not work for CCITTFaxDecode
img_size = len(data)
tiff_header = self.tiff_header_for_CCITT(width, height, img_size, CCITT_group)
img_name = image_name + '_CCITT.tiff'
with open(img_name, 'wb') as img_file:
img_file.write(tiff_header + data)
# save_to_s3(img_name)
number += 1
except:
continue
return number
def read_pages(self, start_page=-1, end_page=-1):
# Downloading file locally
downloaded_file = download_file(self.url)
print(downloaded_file)
# breaking PDF into number of pages in diff pdf files
self.break_pdf(downloaded_file, start_page, end_page)
# creating a pdf reader object
pdf_reader = PdfFileReader(open(downloaded_file, 'rb'))
# Reading each pdf one by one
total_pages = pdf_reader.numPages
if start_page == -1:
start_page = 0
elif start_page < 1 or start_page > total_pages:
return "Start Page Selection Is Wrong"
else:
start_page = start_page - 1
if end_page == -1:
end_page = total_pages
elif end_page < 1 or end_page > total_pages - 1:
return "End Page Selection Is Wrong"
else:
end_page = end_page
for i in range(start_page, end_page):
# creating a page based filename
file = str(i + 1) + "_" + downloaded_file
print("\nStarting to Read Page: ", i + 1, "\n -----------===-------------")
file_text = self.extract_text(file)
print(file_text)
self.extract_image(file)
self.extarct_table(file)
os.remove(file)
print("Stopped Reading Page: ", i + 1, "\n -----------===-------------")
os.remove(downloaded_file)
# I have tested on these 3 pdf files
# url = "http://s3.amazonaws.com/NLP_Project/Original_Documents/Healthcare-January-2017.pdf"
url = "http://s3.amazonaws.com/NLP_Project/Original_Documents/Sample_Test.pdf"
# url = "http://s3.amazonaws.com/NLP_Project/Original_Documents/Sazerac_FS_2017_06_30%20Annual.pdf"
# creating the instance of class
pdf_extractor = PDFExtractor(url)
# Getting desired data out
pdf_extractor.read_pages(15, 23)
pdf reader object has function getPage() which takes page number (starting form index 0) as argument and returns the page object. Page object has function extractText() to extract text from the pdf page. At last, we close the pdf file object.
There are a couple of Python libraries using which you can extract data from PDFs. For example, you can use the PyPDF2 library for extracting text from PDFs where text is in a sequential or formatted manner i.e. in lines or forms. You can also extract tables in PDFs through the Camelot library.
How to Extract Text from a PDF.
Open the PDF Document you wish to convert..
Go to the Convert Tab > Convert To > Text on the toolbar..
Choose a file name and location to save the .txt document that will contain the extracted text..
Click Save to extract the text and to the file selected..