gardaa / pdfextracttxtimg

Python script for extracting text and images from a PDF file, storing the text in a Google Spreadsheet and the images either on local disk or in a Google Drive folder.

Getting Started

To begin with, you have to add environment variables to the .env file. There is an .env.example file included in the repository as an example showing how it is done. This is done to hide sensitive information. You can get this information by creating a project and service account at the Google Cloud Platform (the Cloud Console). The SPREADSHEET_ID and FOLDER_ID is available in the URL of your Google Spreadsheet and Google Drive folder. You have to give your service account an editor role in the spreadsheet for the script to work.

How it's built

This is a Python script made for extracting text and images from PDF files, giving you the opportunity to write and upload it to Google applications through the use of a Google API.

The extracted text gets written to a Google Spreadsheet of your choice. This is done by extracting the text from the PDF, formatting it as a nested array (because that's the way Google Spreadsheet accepts it).

The extracted images either gets uploaded to a Google Drive folder of your choice, or gets stored in a new folder on the local disk (or both). The images will be named the first 7 characters of the filename they got extracted from, followed by an underscore and the index of the page it is located on. Example: 1234567_3_2 means the second image on the third page of the file "1234567". As for the folder created on the local disk, the folder name will just be the first 7 characters of the filename.

As for uploading text or images to a folder on the local disk, the script checks if the folder/file name already exists, and if it does, it exits without uploading.

How to RUN

To run the script you have to enter python3 pdf2txt.py in the terminal. You will see the output of a nested array, which is just a copy of all the text written to the Google Spreadsheet. At the top of the pdf2txt.py file, you have to enter the file name (and path of the file if the file is in another directory than the script). In the future I will add the functionality to write the file name/path as a system argument when executing the code in the terminal like this: python3 pdf2txt.py PATHEXAMPLE.

Known issues

TODO

• Adding functionality to send the file as a system argument