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Author: linzhang-github

pdfminer.ipynb

@@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
+{
+ "cells": [
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# How to convert pdf files to text files? \n",
+    "---\n",
+    "There are different ways to convert pdf to text file, such as using python, some OCR software, or linux commands and etc. Here I will show you two methods to do the pdf converstions. \n",
+    "\n",
+    "- Use a Python package called pdfminer to convert a pdf file to text file \n",
+    "- Use linux commands to perform this work "
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## 1. Use Python package pdfminer to convert a pdf to text file  \n",
+    "- install the python package  "
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "metadata": {
+    "scrolled": true
+   },
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "!pip install pdfminer==20110515"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "- build up a function to convert the pdf to txt file "
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "from cStringIO import StringIO\n",
+    "from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, process_pdf\n",
+    "from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter\n",
+    "from pdfminer.layout import LAParams"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "def to_txt(pdf_path):\n",
+    "    input_ = file(pdf_path, 'rb')\n",
+    "    output = StringIO()\n",
+    "\n",
+    "    manager = PDFResourceManager()\n",
+    "    converter = TextConverter(manager, output, laparams=LAParams())\n",
+    "    process_pdf(manager, converter, input_)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "    return output.getvalue() "
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "metadata": {
+    "scrolled": false
+   },
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "to_txt('~/location_of_the_pdf_file/a.pdf')"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "attachments": {},
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "## 2. Use Linux commands to convert single and a batch of pdf files to txt files   \n",
+    "references: \n",
+    "- https://www.howtogeek.com/228531/how-to-convert-a-pdf-file-to-editable-text-using-the-command-line-in-linux\n",
+    "- https://askubuntu.com/questions/211870/how-to-convert-all-pdf-files-to-text-within-a-folder-with-one-command \n",
+    "- https://askubuntu.com/questions/211870/how-to-convert-all-pdf-files-to-text-within-a-folder-with-one-command"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "#check if linux has popoler-utils package \n",
+    "dpkg -s poppler-utils \n",
+    "\n",
+    "#if not installed, install this \n",
+    "sudo apt-get install poppler-utils  \n",
+    "\n",
+    "# convert pdf to txt file \n",
+    "pdftotext  Your_pdf_file_location/sample.pdf  Your_txt_file_location/sample.txt  \n",
+    "\n",
+    "#preserve the layout the document from the original file \n",
+    "pdftotext sample.pdf sample.txt \n",
+    "\n",
+    "#convert batch pdfs to text files \n",
+    "for file in *.pdf; do pdftotext -layout \"$file\"; done "
+   ]
+  }
+ ],
+ "metadata": {
+  "kernelspec": {
+   "display_name": "Python [conda env:py27]",
+   "language": "python",
+   "name": "conda-env-py27-py"
+  },
+  "language_info": {
+   "codemirror_mode": {
+    "name": "ipython",
+    "version": 2
+   },
+   "file_extension": ".py",
+   "mimetype": "text/x-python",
+   "name": "python",
+   "nbconvert_exporter": "python",
+   "pygments_lexer": "ipython2",
+   "version": "2.7.16"
+  }
+ },
+ "nbformat": 4,
+ "nbformat_minor": 2
+}