Methods to Work With PDF Paperwork Utilizing Python

I actually admire Transportable Doc Format (PDF) recordsdata. They’re immensely common with folks since you get the identical precise content material and format no matter your working system, studying machine or software program getting used.

Anybody who has labored with plain textual content recordsdata in Python earlier than may suppose that working with PDF recordsdata can be going to be simple. However, it’s a bit completely different right here. PDF paperwork are binary recordsdata and extra advanced than simply plain textual content recordsdata, particularly since they include completely different font varieties, colours, and so on.

Nevertheless, that does not imply that it’s arduous to work with PDF paperwork utilizing Python, it’s somewhat easy, and utilizing an exterior module solves the problem.

Preliminary Set Up

As I discussed above, utilizing an exterior module can be the important thing. The module we can be utilizing on this tutorial is PyPDF2. As it’s an exterior module, step one we’ve to take is to put in it. For that, we can be utilizing pip, which is (based mostly on Wikipedia):

A package deal administration system used to put in and handle software program packages written in Python. Many packages will be discovered within the Python Bundle Index (PyPI).

You may comply with the steps talked about within the official information for putting in pip. There’s a good likelihood that pip was put in routinely for you if you happen to downloaded Python from python.org.

PyPDF2 now will be merely put in by typing the next command inside your terminal:

pip set up PyPDF2

Nice! You now have PyPDF2 put in, and also you’re prepared to begin enjoying with PDF paperwork.

PyPDF2 Fundamentals

Earlier than we dig deeper, I wish to provide you with a short overview of the PyPDF2 module. It is a utterly free and open supply library that may do loads of issues with PDF paperwork. You need to use the library not just for studying from a PDF file but in addition for writing, splitting and merging.

Quite a lot of issues have modified within the library from its older variations. For this tutorial, I’m going to make use of the model 2.11.1 of the library.

The PyPDF2 library would not require any dependency for its common options. Nevertheless, you will have some dependencies to work with cryptography and pictures in PDF recordsdata. Automated set up of all dependencies is feasible with the command:

pip set up PyPDF2[full]

Nevertheless, if you recognize that you’ll want to encrypt and decrypt PDF paperwork with AES or Superior Encryption System you will have to put in some cryptography associated dependencies:

pip set up PyPDF2[crypto]

I must also level out that RC4 encryption is supported with the standalone set up of PyPDF2 with none dependencies.

Studying a PDF Doc

The pattern file we can be working with on this tutorial is a PDF model of Magnificence and the Beast hosted on Venture Gutenberg. Go forward and obtain the file to comply with the tutorial, or you’ll be able to merely use any PDF file you want.

The next code will get you arrange for extracting further data from the file:

import PyPDF2

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(ebook)

The primary line imports the PyPDF2 module for us to make use of in our program. We then use the built-in open() perform to open our PDF file in binary mode.

As soon as the file is open, we use the PdfReader base class from the module to initialize our PdfReader object by passing it our ebook because the parameter. We at the moment are able to deal with quite a lot of studying operations on our ebook.

Extra Operations on PDF Paperwork

After studying the PDF doc, we will now perform completely different operations on the doc, as we’ll see on this part.

Variety of Pages

The variety of pages in a PDF doc are accessible with a read-only property of the PdfReader class referred to as pages. This property principally offers us a listing of Web page objects. These web page objects signify the person pages of the PDF file.

You may simply get the variety of pages through the use of the built-in len() perform and passing the listing of Web page objects as a parameter.

import PyPDF2

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(ebook)
    number_of_pages = len(book_reader.pages)
    
    # Outputs: 48
    print(number_of_pages)

On this case, the returned worth was 48 which is the same as the variety of pages in our doc.

Instantly Accessing a Web page Quantity

We’ve got seen within the earlier part that the pages property of the PdfReader class returns a listing of Web page objects. You may immediately entry any web page from the listing by specifying its index. Contemplate the next instance by which I’ll retrieve the second merchandise from a listing of languages.

languages = ["French", "English", "Hindi"]

# Outputs: English
print(languages[1])

Instantly accessing a web page from the PDF doc will work equally. Right here is an instance:

import PyPDF2

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(ebook)
    page_list = book_reader.pages
    
    first_page = page_list[0]
    last_page = page_list[-1]

Now that we’ve discovered tips on how to entry a Web page object based mostly on the web page quantity. Let’s examine tips on how to do the reverse and get the web page quantity from a web page object. The PyPDF2 library has a really helpful perform referred to as get_page_number() that you need to use to get the  web page quantity of the present web page. All it’s essential to do is cross the Web page object as a parameter to the get_page_number() perform.

import random
from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PdfReader(ebook)
    page_list = book_reader.pages
    
    last_page = page_list[-1]
    # Outputs: 47
    print(book_reader.get_page_number(last_page))

    some_page = page_list[random.randint(15, 35)]
    # Outputs: 19
    print(book_reader.get_page_number(some_page))

Within the above instance, we first attempt to get the web page quantity for the final web page in our PDF doc and it comes out to 47 because the indexing begins at 0. A worth of 47 truly means the web page 48.

We additionally attempt the identical perform with a web page between 15 and 35 chosen at random. The output is nineteen on this specific occasion however it can range with each execution.

Web page Mode and Web page Structure

The library additionally means that you can simply entry the web page mode and web page format data in your PDF doc. You merely want to make use of the properties referred to as page_mode and page_layout to take action.

All of the legitimate web page mode values are proven within the desk beneath:

The desk beneath reveals all of the legitimate web page format values:

With a purpose to test our web page mode, we will use the next script:

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PdfReader(ebook)

    # Outputs: None
    print(book_reader.page_mode)

    # Outputs: None
    print(book_reader.page_layout)

Within the case of our PDF doc the returned worth is None, which implies that the web page mode in addition to the web page format just isn’t specified.

Extract Metadata

The PdfReader class additionally has a property referred to as metadata that returns the doc data dictionary for the PDF file that you’re studying. This metadata can include data such because the creator identify, title of the doc, creation date, and producer. The next instance tries to extract all of this data from our personal PDF doc.

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PdfReader(ebook)
    book_metadata = book_reader.metadata

    # Magnificence and the Beast
    print(book_metadata.title)

    # Nameless
    print(book_metadata.creator)

    # 2006-11-30 01:13:00-08:00
    print(book_metadata.creation_date)

    # pdfeTeX-1.21a
    print(book_metadata.producer)

Please remember that some PDF recordsdata might have all of those values set to None.

Extract Textual content

We’ve got been wandering across the file thus far, so let’s have a look at what’s inside. The tactic extract_text() can be our pal on this job. The script to extract a textual content from the PDF doc is as follows:

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

with open('beauty-and-the-beast.pdf', 'rb') as ebook:
    book_reader = PdfReader(ebook)
    page_list = book_reader.pages
    
    story_page = page_list[6]
    page_text = story_page.extract_text()

    print(page_text)

The output that I acquired after executing the above script is proven beneath:

[002]
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
As soon as upon a time, in a really far-off nation, there lived a mer-
chant who had been so lucky in all his undertakings that he
was enormously wealthy. As he had, nonetheless, six sons and 6
daughters,hefoundthathismoneywasnottoomuchtoletthem
allhaveeverythingtheyfancied,astheywereaccustomedtodo.
However at some point a most sudden misfortune befell them. Their
home caught hearth and was speedily burnt to the bottom, with
all the sumptuous furnishings, the books, photos, gold, silver, and
treasured items it contained; and this was solely the start of

I used to be in a position to extract all of the textual content on the web page. Nevertheless, as you’ll be able to see the extract_text() perform would not get the spacing between the phrases proper in some locations. The ultimate outcome depends upon quite a lot of components with one in all them being the generator used to create the PDF file. This principally implies that you will not face such situation in all PDF recordsdata however a few of them are certain to have tousled spacing upon textual content extraction.

Conclusion

As we will see, Python makes it easy to work with PDF paperwork. This tutorial simply scratched the floor on this matter, and yow will discover extra particulars on completely different operations you’ll be able to carry out on PDF paperwork on the PyPDF2 documentation web page.