python - How do I use pdfminer as a library

Question

I am trying to get text data from a pdf using pdfminer. I am able to extract this data to a .txt file successfully with the pdfminer command line tool pdf2txt.py. I currently do this and then use a python script to clean up the .txt file. I would like to incorporate the pdf extract process into the script and save myself a step.

I thought I was on to something when I found this link, but I didn't have success with any of the solutions. Perhaps the function listed there needs to be updated again because I am using a newer version of pdfminer.

I also tried the function shown here, but it also did not work.

Another approach I tried was to call the script within a script using os.system. This was also unsuccessful.

I am using Python version 2.7.1 and pdfminer version 20110227.

Answer 1

Here is a new solution that works with the latest version:

from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from cStringIO import StringIO

def convert_pdf_to_txt(path):
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    retstr = StringIO()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, retstr, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)
    fp = file(path, 'rb')
    interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)
    password = ""
    maxpages = 0
    caching = True
    pagenos=set()
    for page in PDFPage.get_pages(fp, pagenos, maxpages=maxpages, password=password,caching=caching, check_extractable=True):
        interpreter.process_page(page)
    fp.close()
    device.close()
    str = retstr.getvalue()
    retstr.close()
    return str