Extract Text from PDF using Python

In this article, I will take you through how you can extract text from PDF files using Python. To extract text from a PDF is not an easy task, there is a lot to do here. But for some help, I will use a Python package known as pdf2image, which can be easily installed bu using the pip command; pip install pdf2image.

The biggest challenge we face while we extract text from PDF file is that PDF files come in different file formats. So first we need to prepare a function so that we can convert every format of a PDF file into our desired one.

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Extract Text From PDF Using Python

Now let’s start with this task to extract text from PDF using Python. First, we need to import all the packages. You need pdf2image to convert PDF files to ppm image files.

We also need to manipulate the paths to join and rename text files, so we import the os and sys packages. The following part calls a PIL library and imports the image with pytesseract:

import pdf2image
import os, sys
try:
    from PIL import Image
except ImportError:
    import Image
import pytesseractCode language: Python (python)

Now we need to initialize the path of your documents and the counter to be used later in the pdf extract function to count your documents in the folder:

PATH = 'Enter your path'

#initialize the counter that you will use later in your pdf extraction function
i = 1Code language: Python (python)

Now, we need to delete some unrequired files from our pdf files, for this I will create a new function:

def delete_ppms():
  for file in os.listdir(PATH):
    if '.ppm' in file or '.DS_Store' in file:
      try:
          os.remove(PATH + file)
      except FileNotFoundError:
          passCode language: Python (python)

Now we need to sort the pdf files according to their types. I will start this by creating to lists one for pdf files and one for Docx files because these two types are the most used pdf file types:

pdf_files = []
docx_files = []

# append document names into the lists by their extension type
for f in os.listdir(PATH):
  full_name = os.path.join(PATH, f) 
  if os.path.isfile(full_name):
    name = os.path.basename(f)
    filename, ext = os.path.splitext(name)
    if ext == '.pdf':
      pdf_files.append(name)
    elif ext == ('.docx'):
      docx_files.append(name)Code language: Python (python)

Now we can finally extract text from PDF files. Here is the pdf_extract function. First, it prints the name of each file from which the text is extracted. Depending on the size of the document, extracting text may take some time.

This print function will help you see which file is currently checked out:

def pdf_extract(file, i):
  print("extracting from file:", file)
  delete_ppms()
  images = pdf2image.convert_from_path(PATH + file, output_folder=PATH)
  j = 0
  for file in sorted (os.listdir(PATH)):
      if '.ppm' in file and 'image' not in file:
        os.rename(PATH + file, PATH + 'image' + str(i) + '-' + str(j) + '.ppm')
        j += 1
  j = 0
  f = open(PATH +'result{}.txt'.format(i), 'w')
  files = [f for f in os.listdir(PATH) if '.ppm' in f]

  for file in sorted(files, key=lambda x: int(x[x.index('-') + 1: x.index('.')])):
      temp = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(PATH + file))
      f.write(temp)
  f.close()Code language: Python (python)

Now, we can use our function to extract from all the PDF files using Python:

for i in range(len(pdf_files)):
  pdf_file = pdf_files[i]
  pdf_extract(pdf_file, i)Code language: Python (python)

Now after running the function if you will go to the directory you will see a text file by the name of result1.txt with all the text extracted from the PDF file.

I hope you liked this article on how to extract text from PDF files by using Python. Feel free to ask your valuable questions in the comments section below.

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