node-poppler

node-poppler is a wrapper around Poppler utilities. You must install the underlying Poppler binaries on your system.

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

Install poppler-data and poppler-utils using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install poppler-data poppler-utils

macOS

Install using Homebrew:

brew install poppler

Windows

64-bit Windows binaries are provided via the optional node-poppler-win32 package.

Install the node-poppler package using npm:

npm i node-poppler

All methods in the Poppler class accept an extras object as their final argument. You can pass an AbortSignal via extras.signal to cancel the underlying child process execution.

This is useful for implementing timeouts or responding to user cancellation in long-running PDF processing tasks.

const controller = new AbortController();
const { signal } = controller;

// Start the operation
const promise = poppler.pdfToText('large.pdf', 'out.txt', {}, { signal });

// Cancel the operation after 5 seconds
setTimeout(() => controller.abort(), 5000);

try {
  await promise;
} catch (err) {
  if (err.name === 'AbortError') {
    console.log('Operation was cancelled');
  }
}

To use node-poppler, instantiate the Poppler class. If you do not provide a binPath, the constructor will attempt to find the Poppler pdfinfo binary in your system's PATH.

On Windows (win32), if local binaries are not found, the package will attempt to use node-poppler-win32 if it is installed.

If the binaries cannot be located, the constructor will throw an error.

const { Poppler } = require('node-poppler');

// Option 1: Automatic discovery via PATH
const poppler = new Poppler();

// Option 2: Explicit path to the directory containing Poppler binaries
const poppler = new Poppler('/usr/local/bin/poppler-utils');

The pdfToText method extracts text content from a PDF file and saves it to a specified output file.

"use strict";

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = "test_document.pdf";
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	firstPageToConvert: 1,
	lastPageToConvert: 2,
};
const outputFile = "test_document.txt";

poppler
	.pdfToText(file, outputFile, options)
	.then((res) => {
		console.log(res);
	})
	.catch((err) => {
		console.error(err);
		throw err;
	});

When using the pdfattach command, you can provide the following boolean options to control its behavior:

• printVersionInfo: (Flag: -v) Prints copyright and version information.
• replace: (Flag: -replace) Replaces an embedded file if a file with the same name already exists.

// Example usage of options in a pdfattach call
// Note: Exact syntax depends on the parent API implementation
{
  printVersionInfo: true,
  replace: true
}

Use pdfToPs to convert a PDF file to PostScript (PS).

Parameters:

• file: PDF file as a Buffer or a filepath string.
• outputFile: Filepath of the file to output the results to. If undefined, it writes to stdout.
• options: PdfToPsOptions.
• extras: PopplerExtraOptions.

const { Poppler } = require('node-poppler');
const poppler = new Poppler();

await poppler.pdfToPs('input.pdf', 'output.ps', { /* PdfToPsOptions */ });

Use pdfToPpm to convert a PDF file to color (PPM), grayscale (PGM), or monochrome (PBM) image files.

Parameters:

• file: PDF file as a Buffer or a filepath string.
• outputPath: Filepath to output the results to.
• options: PdfToPpmOptions.
• extras: PopplerExtraOptions.

const { Poppler } = require('node-poppler');
const poppler = new Poppler();

await poppler.pdfToPpm('input.pdf', 'output_path', { /* PdfToPpmOptions */ });

Use pdfToCairo to convert a PDF file to EPS, JPEG, PDF, PNG, PS, SVG, or TIFF.

Parameters:

• file: PDF file as a Buffer or a filepath string.
• outputFile: Filepath of the file to output the results to. If undefined, it writes to stdout.
• options: PdfToCairoOptions.
• extras: PopplerExtraOptions.

Stdout Behavior: Using stdout is only valid with image formats (jpeg, png, tiff) if options.singleFile is set to true. If outputFile is undefined and singleFile or pdfFile is true, the encoding is set to binary to prevent corruption.

const { Poppler } = require('node-poppler');
const poppler = new Poppler();

// Convert to PNG file
await poppler.pdfToCairo('input.pdf', 'output.png', { /* PdfToCairoOptions */ });

Use pdfToText to convert a PDF file to TXT.

Parameters:

• file: PDF file as a Buffer or a filepath string.
• outputFile: Filepath of the file to output the results to. If undefined, it writes to stdout.
• options: PdfToTextOptions. Note that options.maintainLayout is internally mapped to the --preserveWhitespace flag.
• extras: PopplerExtraOptions.

const { Poppler } = require('node-poppler');
const poppler = new Poppler();

// Extract text to stdout
const text = await poppler.pdfToText('input.pdf', undefined, { maintainLayout: true });