WARNING: This software is in its very early days, might not work well, and might change dramatically in future versions.

PDFPlumber

Plumb a PDF for detailed information about each text character, rectangle, line, and image.

Built on pdfminer and pdfminer.six.

Installation

pip install pdfplumber

Usage

Basic Example

import pdfplumber

pdf = pdfplumber.from_path("path/to/file.pdf")

# OR

with open("path/to/file.pdf") as f:
    pdf = pdfplumber.load(f)

if len(pdf.chars):
    print(pdf.chars[0])

if len(pdf.rects):
    print(pdf.rects[0])

if len(pdf.lines):
    print(pdf.lines[0])

Loading a PDF

pdfplumber provides two main ways to load a PDF:

• pdfplumber.load(file_like_object)
• pdfplumber.from_path("path/to/file.pdf")

Both methods return an instance of the pdfplumber.PDF class.

Objects

Each instance of pdfplumber.PDF provides access to six types of PDF objects. The following properties each return a Python list of the matching objects:

• .chars, each representing a single text character.
• .annos, each representing a single annotation-text character.
• .lines, each representing a single 1-dimensional line.
• .rects, each representing a single 2-dimensional rectangle.
• .images, each representing a single image.
• .figures, each representing a single figure.

Object Properties

Each object is represented as a simple Python dict, with the following properties:

• char / anno:

  • pageid: Page ID on which this character was found.
  • text: E.g., "z", or "Z" or " ".
  • fontname: Name of the character's font face.
  • size: Font size.
  • adv: Equal to text width * the font size * scaling factor.
  • upright: Whether the character is upright.
  • height: Height of the character.
  • width: Width of the character.
  • x0: Distance of left side of character from left side of page.
  • x1: Distance of right side of character from left side of page.
  • y0: Distance of bottom of character from bottom of page.
  • y1: Distance of top of character from bottom of page.
  • top: Distance of top of character from top of page.
  • doctop: Distance of top of character from top of document.
  • kind: "LTChar" / "LTAnno"

• line:

  • pageid: Page ID on which this line was found.
  • height: Height of line.
  • width: Width of line.
  • x0: Distance of left-side extremity from left side of page.
  • x1: Distance of right-side extremity from left side of page.
  • y0: Distance of bottom extremity from bottom of page.
  • y1: Distance of top extremity bottom of page.
  • top: Distance of top of line from top of page.
  • doctop: Distance of top of line from top of document.
  • linewidth: Thickness of line.
  • kind: "LTLine"

• rect:

  • pageid: Page ID on which this rectangle was found.
  • height: Height of rectangle.
  • width: Width of rectangle.
  • x0: Distance of left side of rectangle from left side of page.
  • x1: Distance of right side of rectangle from left side of page.
  • y0: Distance of bottom of rectangle from bottom of page.
  • y1: Distance of top of rectangle from bottom of page.
  • top: Distance of top of rectangle from top of page.
  • doctop: Distance of top of rectangle from top of document.
  • linewidth: Thickness of line.
  • kind: "LTRect"

• image: TK

• figure: TK

Python Support

Support for Python 3 is rough around the edges and largely dependent on the progress of pdfminer.six.

Feedback

Issues and pull requests welcome.