Extract text to file

[sakgoyal]

There does not seem to be a way to extract-text into an output file. is there a reason for this?

 > pdfly extract-text input.pdf test.txt --help

 Usage: pdfly extract-text [OPTIONS] PDF

 Extract text from a PDF file.

╭─ Arguments ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ *    pdf      FILE  [required]                                                                                       │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --help          Show this message and exit.                                                                          │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

[Lucas-C]

Hi @sakgoyal

You can simply use shell redirection operators in order to achieve this:

pdfly extract-text input.pdf > output.txt

We should probably document this on https://pdfly.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/subcommand-extract-text.html.
I will add a mention of this.

[Lucas-C]

Maybe we could also provide a extract-text -o/--output-pattern option to allow text output to be printed into different text files?

For example pdfly extract-text doc.pdf -o page-{}.txt would create as many text files as the document as pages, named page-1.txt, page-2.txt, page-3.txt, etc.

What do you think about this? 🙂

[sakgoyal]

I tried it on windows and it crashed within pdfly. im fairly certain it's an issue with powershell and windows utf16 strings but im not 100% sure.

 > pdfly.exe extract-text .\Sources\Cassandra.pdf > test.txt
┌───────────────────────────────────────── Traceback (most recent call last) ─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ C:\Users\...\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\pdfly\cli.py:235 in extract_text         │
│                                                                                                                     │
│   232 │                                                                                                             │
│   233 │   reader = PdfReader(str(pdf))                                                                              │
│   234 │   for page in reader.pages:                                                                                 │
│ > 235 │   │   typer.echo(page.extract_text())                                                                       │
│   236                                                                                                               │
│   237                                                                                                               │
│   238 @entry_point.command(name="meta", help=pdfly.metadata.__doc__)  # type: ignore[misc]                          │
│                                                                                                                     │
│ ┌──────────────────────────────────────────── locals ────────────────────────────────────────────┐                  │
│ │   page = {                                                                                     │                  │
│ │          │   '/Group': IndirectObject(1587, 0, 1341679974592),                                 │                  │
│ │          │   '/Contents': [                                                                    │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(5, 0, 1341679974592),                                          │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1588, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1589, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1590, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(6, 0, 1341679974592)                                           │                  │
│ │          │   ],                                                                                │                  │
│ │          │   '/Type': '/Page',                                                                 │                  │
│ │          │   '/Resources': {                                                                   │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/ColorSpace': {'/pgfprgb': ['/Pattern', '/DeviceRGB']},                      │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/ExtGState': {},                                                             │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/ProcSet': ['/PDF', '/Text', '/ImageB', '/ImageC', '/ImageI'],               │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/Font': {                                                                    │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F240': IndirectObject(1591, 0, 1341679974592),                          │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F290': IndirectObject(14, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F269': IndirectObject(15, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F246': IndirectObject(1592, 0, 1341679974592),                          │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F279': IndirectObject(17, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F243': IndirectObject(19, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F252': IndirectObject(20, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F263': IndirectObject(21, 0, 1341679974592),                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/F275': IndirectObject(22, 0, 1341679974592)                             │                  │
│ │          │   │   },                                                                            │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/Pattern': {},                                                               │                  │
│ │          │   │   '/XObject': {                                                                 │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/Im1': IndirectObject(1593, 0, 1341679974592),                           │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/Xi2': IndirectObject(2, 0, 1341679974592),                              │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/Xi0': IndirectObject(1594, 0, 1341679974592),                           │                  │
│ │          │   │   │   '/Xi1': IndirectObject(1, 0, 1341679974592)                               │                  │
│ │          │   │   }                                                                             │                  │
│ │          │   },                                                                                │                  │
│ │          │   '/Annots': [                                                                      │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1595, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1596, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1597, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1598, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1599, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1600, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1601, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1602, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1603, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   IndirectObject(1604, 0, 1341679974592),                                       │                  │
│ │          │   │   ... +25                                                                       │                  │
│ │          │   ],                                                                                │                  │
│ │          │   '/Parent': IndirectObject(41, 0, 1341679974592),                                  │                  │
│ │          │   '/MediaBox': [0, 0, 612, 792]                                                     │                  │
│ │          }                                                                                     │                  │
│ │    pdf = WindowsPath('C:/Users/[redacted]/Sources/Cassandra.pdf') │                  │
│ │ reader = <pypdf._reader.PdfReader object at 0x00000138625BB8C0>                                │                  │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘                  │
│                                                                                                                     │
│ C:\Users\[redacted]\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\site-packages\click\utils.py:321 in echo               │
│                                                                                                                     │
│ C:\Users\[redacted]\AppData\Local\Python\pythoncore-3.14-64\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py:19 in encode                       │
│                                                                                                                     │
│    16                                                                                                               │
│    17 class IncrementalEncoder(codecs.IncrementalEncoder):                                                          │
│    18 │   def encode(self, input, final=False):                                                                     │
│ >  19 │   │   return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]                                     │
│    20                                                                                                               │
│    21 class IncrementalDecoder(codecs.IncrementalDecoder):                                                          │
│    22 │   def decode(self, input, final=False):                                                                     │
│                                                                                                                     │
│ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────── locals ──────────────────────────────────────────────┐               │
│ │ final = False                                                                                     │               │
│ │ input = 'Cassandra: Efficient Enforcement of Sequential Execution for\r\nCryptographic Prog'+5471 │               │
│ │  self = <encodings.cp1252.IncrementalEncoder object at 0x0000013835C26270>                        │               │
│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘               │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u2217' in position 99: character maps to <undefined>
> 

[Lucas-C]

In order for me to help you and try to reproduce your issue, could you share the PDF file that you are using?

[papametis]

Hello, I just want to say that I'd be okay taking this issue up for personal practise, if it isn't a problem. I understand it may be redundant, but if it's not problematic to have this option (and the only issue behind adding it is the time it will take to add), then I could do it. 🙂