pdftotext Python Library

The library requires system-level dependencies (specifically Poppler and build tools) to compile. Install the appropriate package for your operating system:

Debian, Ubuntu, and friends:

sudo apt install build-essential libpoppler-cpp-dev pkg-config python3-dev

Fedora, Red Hat, and friends:

sudo yum install gcc-c++ pkgconfig poppler-cpp-devel python3-devel

macOS:

brew install pkg-config poppler python

Once the OS dependencies are installed, you can install the Python package using pip.

pip install pdftotext

The pdftotext.PDF object behaves like a collection of pages. You can determine the total page count using len(), iterate over pages in a loop, or access specific pages using integer indexing.

import pdftotext

with open("lorem_ipsum.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)

# Get total page count
print(len(pdf))

# Iterate over all pages
for page in pdf:
    print(page)

# Access individual pages by index
print(pdf[0])
print(pdf[1])

# Extract all text into a single string
full_text = "\n\n".join(pdf)
print(full_text)

To extract text from a PDF, open the file in binary mode (rb) and pass the file object to pdftotext.PDF(). If the PDF is password-protected, provide the password as the second argument to the constructor.

import pdftotext

# Load an unprotected PDF
with open("lorem_ipsum.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)

# Load a password-protected PDF
with open("secure.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f, "secret")