Python can process pdf files easily, it provides some libraries to process pdf for us. In this page, we will list some basic operations when processing pdf files.
To process a pdf file, you should notice:
1.PDF file is integral or incomplete or not.
Before processing a pdf file using python, we should make it be integral, otherwise, you will fail to process it. Especially the file is downloaded from site.
A Simple Guide to Python Detect PDF File is Corrupted or Incompleted
2.Check pdf file is not opened or locked by other applications
If a pdf file is opened or locked by other applications, you will can not process it. Otherwise, you may get some errors.
A Simple Way to Find Out Which Process is Locking a File or Folder on Windows 10
3.Extract text from pdf document
There are some python libraries to process pdf document, such as PyPDF2 and PyMuPDF. Both of them can extract text from pdf file.
A Beginner Guide to Python Extract Text From PDF Using PyPDF2
Best Practice to Python Extract Plain Text and HTML Text From PDF with PyMuPDF
However, which one is better? The answer is here.
Python Extract Text From PDF: PyPDF2 or PyMuPDF? Which is Better?
Moreover,if a pdf only contains images, you can not extract text from pdf. In this situation, we can convert pdf to images, then extract text from images.
A Simple Guide to Python Extract Text from Images with Tesseract-OCR – Python Tutorial
4.Create pdf file
To create a pdf, we can convert an image, a html page, a svg file to pdf.
4.1 Image to PDF
Best Practice to Python Convert PNG to PDF for Img2pdf Beginnners
A Simple Guide to Python Convert Image to PDF without Removing Image Alpha Channel
4.2 HTML to PDF
A Simple Guide to Convert HTML to PDF in Python
4.3 SVG to PDF
A Simple Guide to Python Convert SVG to PDF with SvgLib
5.Convert PDF to Images
We also can convert a pdf document to several images page by page, which is very helpful to view it by browser.
Best Practice to Python Convert PDF to Images for Beginners
6.Split and Merge PDFs
As to a big pdf document, we can split it to some small ones or merge some small pdfs to a big one.
Python Split and Merge PDF with PyMUPDF: A Completed Guide
7.PDF Metadata
7.1 Bookmarks
We can extract pdf bookmarks from its meta outline information.
Python Extract PDF Bookmarks Using PyMuPDF: A Step Guide for Beginner
7.2 PDF Title
PDF matadata also contains the title of a pdf, however, it is not correct. In order to get a pdf title, we can extract from its content.
Python Extract PDF Paper Title By Content, not By Metadata: A Step Guide – Python Tutorial