How do I use pdfminer as a library

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

If you are working with scraped data via urllib2, try this (which is developed and explained here):

def pdf_to_text(scraped_pdf_data): 
    from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, process_pdf 
    from pdfminer.pdfdevice import PDFDevice 
    from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter 
    from pdfminer.layout import LAParams 

    import StringIO 
    fp = StringIO.StringIO() 
    fp.write(scraped_pdf_data) 
    fp.seek(0) 
    outfp = StringIO.StringIO() 

    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager() 
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, outfp, laparams=LAParams()) 
    process_pdf(rsrcmgr, device, fp) 
    device.close() 

    t = outfp.getvalue() 
    outfp.close() 
    fp.close() 
    return t

Like the other answers, the code here adapts the pdf2txt utility that PDFMiner itself provides. You can thus also convert to html or xml — just sub HTMLConverter or XMLConverter for TextConverter everywhere above.

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

can anybody say me : is there any specific place where the pdf file is to be placed??

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

The following modification of the non-process_pdf answers pulls the text straight from a URL string name and works with version 20140328 and Python 2.7:

from urllib2 import urlopen
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(url):
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    retstr = StringIO()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, retstr, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)

    scrape = urlopen(url).read()
    fp = StringIO(scrape)

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

The following code works for me with latest version of PDFMiner it takes path of pdf and return text in .txt format.

P.S: This is a modification of above answer.

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, outtype='txt'):
    outfile = path[:-3] + outtype
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    if outfile:
        outfp = file(outfile, 'w')
    else:
        outfp = sys.stdout
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, outfp, 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()
    outfp.close()
    return

Only if someone still needs it: How to print the HTML from a PDF using PDFMiner:

import sys
import getopt
from Core.Interfaces.IReader import IReader
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
from cStringIO import StringIO

class PdfReader(object):
def __init__(self):
    pass

def readText(self,path, outtype='text', opts={}):
    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)

    print laparams
    #
    #PDFDocument.debug = debug
    #PDFParser.debug = debug
    CMapDB.debug = debug
    PDFResourceManager.debug = debug
    PDFPageInterpreter.debug = debug
    PDFDevice.debug = debug
    #
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()

    #outtype = 'text'

    outfp = StringIO()

    device = HTMLConverter(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()
    print outfp.getvalue()
    outfp.close()

    return



reader = PdfReader()
opt = map(None,['-W','-L','-t'],[0.5,0.4,'html'])
reader.readText("/test_data/test.pdf","html",opt)

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)

just in case anyone still needs this,
got it working with requests and python 3.4.
thanks to @bahmait for his answer above 🙂

import requests

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


def pdf_to_text(url=None):
    text = None
    pdf = requests.get(url)

    if pdf.ok:
        fp = StringIO(str(pdf.content, 'utf-8'))
        outfp = StringIO()

        rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
        device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, outfp, laparams=LAParams())
        process_pdf(rsrcmgr, device, fp)
        device.close()

        text = outfp.getvalue()
        outfp.close()
        fp.close()
    return text


if __name__ == "__main__":
    hello_world_text = pdf_to_text("https://bytebucket.org/hsoft/pdfminer3k/raw/28edfc91caed830674ca0b928f42571f7dee6091/samples/simple1.pdf")
    no_pdf = pdf_to_text('http://www.google.com/404')
    print(hello_world_text)
    print(no_pdf)

The following code snippets is able to extract plain text from pdf documents using the latest version of pdfminer(as of 23-Mar-2016). Hope this helps.

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')

    parser = PDFParser(fp)
    doc = PDFDocument(parser)
    parser.set_document(doc)

    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)

    text = retstr.getvalue()

    fp.close()
    device.close()
    retstr.close()
    print text
    return text

convert_pdf_to_txt(<path_of_the_pdf_file>)

Here’s my solution

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

def convert_pdf_to_txt(path, pages=None):
    if not pages:
        pagenums = set()
    else:
        pagenums = set(pages)
    output = StringIO()
    manager = PDFResourceManager()
    converter = TextConverter(manager, output, laparams=LAParams())
    interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(manager, converter)

    infile = open(path, 'rb')
    for page in PDFPage.get_pages(infile, pagenums):
        interpreter.process_page(page)
    infile.close()
    converter.close()
    text = output.getvalue()
    output.close()
    return text

For example you just want to read the first 3 pages of a pdf file:

text = convert_pdf_to_txt('../Data/EN-FINAL Table 9.pdf', pages=[0,1,2])

pdfminer.six==20160614

python: 3.x

Here’s an answer that works with pdfminer.six running python 3.6. It uses the pdfminer.high_level module that abstracts away a lot of the underlying detail if you just want to get out the raw text from a simple PDF file.

import pdfminer
import io

def extract_raw_text(pdf_filename):
    output = io.StringIO()
    laparams = pdfminer.layout.LAParams() # Using the defaults seems to work fine

    with open(pdf_filename, "rb") as pdffile:
        pdfminer.high_level.extract_text_to_fp(pdffile, output, laparams=laparams)

    return output.getvalue()

This one worked for me in python 3.
It requires the PDFMiner.six package

pip install pdfminer.six

The code is as follows (same code as everyone, with minor fixes):

from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from six 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 = open(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.replace("\n","n")

Full disclosure, I am one of the maintainers of pdfminer.six. It is a community-maintained version of pdfminer for python 3.

Nowadays, it has multiple api’s to extract text from a PDF, depending on your needs. Behind the scenes, all of these api’s use the same logic for parsing and analyzing the layout.

(All the examples assume your PDF file is called example.pdf)

Commandline

If you want to extract text just once you can use the commandline tool pdf2txt.py:

$ pdf2txt.py example.pdf

High-level api

If you want to extract text (properties) with Python, you can use the high-level api. This approach is the go-to solution if you want to programmatically extract information from a PDF.

from pdfminer.high_level import extract_text

# Extract text from a pdf.
text = extract_text('example.pdf')

# Extract iterable of LTPage objects.
pages = extract_pages('example.pdf')

Composable api

There is also a composable api that gives a lot of flexibility in handling the resulting objects. For example, it allows you to create your own layout algorithm. This method is suggested in the other answers, but I would only recommend this when you need to customize some component.

from io import StringIO

from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.pdfdocument import PDFDocument
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFParser

output_string = StringIO()
with open('example.pdf', 'rb') as in_file:
    parser = PDFParser(in_file)
    doc = PDFDocument(parser)
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, output_string, laparams=LAParams())
    interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)
    for page in PDFPage.create_pages(doc):
        interpreter.process_page(page)

print(output_string.getvalue())