Python PDF Mining Get Position of Text on Every Line

Question

I am currently using the class provided in the answer here:

How to extract text and text coordinates from a pdf file?

The class provided is very helpful in that I can get the position of every text box in a PDF. The class given also inserts a '_' every time there is a new line within the textbox.

I was wondering whether there was some way to get the position of each line of text within the textbox as well?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 26 '19 at 15:21

Found it: The solution is to recurse even when there is a TextBox, until a textline is found. The class below should provide the x and y coordinates of every line of text on a pdf when the parsepdf method is called.

from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFParser
from pdfminer.pdfdocument import PDFDocument
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFPage
from pdfminer.pdfpage import PDFTextExtractionNotAllowed
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.pdfdevice import PDFDevice
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from pdfminer.converter import PDFPageAggregator
import pdfminer

class pdfPositionHandling:

    def parse_obj(self, lt_objs):

        # loop over the object list
        for obj in lt_objs:

            if isinstance(obj, pdfminer.layout.LTTextLine):
                print "%6d, %6d, %s" % (obj.bbox[0], obj.bbox[1], obj.get_text().replace('\n', '_'))

            # if it's a textbox, also recurse
            if isinstance(obj, pdfminer.layout.LTTextBoxHorizontal):
                self.parse_obj(obj._objs)

            # if it's a container, recurse
            elif isinstance(obj, pdfminer.layout.LTFigure):
                self.parse_obj(obj._objs)

    def parsepdf(self, filename, startpage, endpage):

        # Open a PDF file.
        fp = open(filename, 'rb')

        # Create a PDF parser object associated with the file object.
        parser = PDFParser(fp)

        # Create a PDF document object that stores the document structure.
        # Password for initialization as 2nd parameter
        document = PDFDocument(parser)

        # Check if the document allows text extraction. If not, abort.
        if not document.is_extractable:
            raise PDFTextExtractionNotAllowed

        # Create a PDF resource manager object that stores shared resources.
        rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()

        # Create a PDF device object.
        device = PDFDevice(rsrcmgr)

        # BEGIN LAYOUT ANALYSIS
        # Set parameters for analysis.
        laparams = LAParams()

        # Create a PDF page aggregator object.
        device = PDFPageAggregator(rsrcmgr, laparams=laparams)

            # Create a PDF interpreter object.
        interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)


        i = 0
        # loop over all pages in the document
        for page in PDFPage.create_pages(document):
            if i >= startpage and i <= endpage:
                # read the page into a layout object
                interpreter.process_page(page)
                layout = device.get_result()

                # extract text from this object
                self.parse_obj(layout._objs)
            i += 1

Python PDF Mining Get Position of Text on Every Line

1 Answers1