PdfExtractor

A powerful and easy-to-use Elixir library for extracting text and metadata from PDF files.

PdfExtractor leverages Python's pdfplumber library through seamless integration to provide robust PDF text extraction capabilities. It supports both file-based and binary-based operations, making it suitable for various use cases from local file processing to web-based PDF handling.

Features

• 🔍 Extract text from single or multiple PDF pages
• 📍 Area-based extraction using bounding boxes
• 📐 Extract words together with their position on the page
• 📋 Extract tables as rows of cells
• 🔐 Open encrypted PDFs with a password
• 🌐 Work with PDF data directly from memory (e.g., HTTP downloads)
• 📊 Get PDF metadata like title, author, creation date
• 🐍 Leverages Python's powerful pdfplumber library
• 🚀 Simple and intuitive API
• ✅ Comprehensive test coverage
• 📚 Full documentation

Installation

Add pdf_extractor to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:pdf_extractor, "~> 0.9.0"}
  ]
end

Then start it in your application start function:

defmodule MyApp.Application do
  use Application

  def start(_type, _args) do
    children = [
        PdfExtractor,
        ...
    ]

    opts = [strategy: :one_for_one, name: MyApp.Supervisor]
    Supervisor.start_link(children, opts)
  end
end

Usage

Extract text from specific regions using bounding boxes {x0, y0, x1, y1}:

pages = %{
  0 => {0, 0, 300, 200},    # Top-left area of page 0
  1 => [
        {200, 300, 600, 500}, # Bottom-right area of page 1
        {0, 0, 200, 250}, # Top-left area of page 1
       ]
}
PdfExtractor.extract_text("path/to/document.pdf", pages)

Return Format

The function returns a map where keys are page numbers and values are the extracted text:

%{
  0 => "Text from page 0...",
  1 => ["Text from page 1 (first area)...", "Text from page 1 (second area)..."],
  2 => "Text from page 2..."
}

Keeping the Layout

Pass layout: true to pad the text with spaces and blank lines so it keeps its position on the page. Columns of statements and tables stay aligned instead of being flattened into single lines:

PdfExtractor.extract_text("path/to/document.pdf", 0, layout: true)

Encrypted Files

Every function takes a :password option for encrypted PDFs. Without it, or with a wrong one, the function returns {:error, exception}:

PdfExtractor.extract_text("path/to/document.pdf", [], password: "secret")

Tables

Use extract_tables/3 to get the tables of each page as rows of cells. By default the cell borders come from the lines drawn on the page; use the :text strategy for tables drawn without lines:

PdfExtractor.extract_tables("path/to/document.pdf", 0)
# {:ok, %{0 => [[["Item", "Quantity", "Price"], ["Work", "1", "1 500,00 €"]]]}}

PdfExtractor.extract_tables("path/to/document.pdf", 0,
  vertical_strategy: :text,
  horizontal_strategy: :text
)

Words With Positions

Use extract_words/3 to get every word with its bounding box in PDF points, measured from the top left corner of the page. It takes the same pages and areas as extract_text/3:

PdfExtractor.extract_words("path/to/document.pdf", 0)
# {:ok,
#  %{
#    0 => [
#      %{text: "Text", left: 48.0, right: 67.99875, top: 26.64224999999999, bottom: 36.39224999999999},
#      %{text: "Example", left: 70.734375, right: 110.757, top: 26.64224999999999, bottom: 36.39224999999999},
#      ...
#    ]
#  }}

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Built on top of the excellent pdfplumber Python library
• Uses pythonx for seamless Python integration