A Step-by-Step Guide to Parsing PDFs using the pdfplumber Library In Python

Azhar Sayyad
2 min readJan 16, 2023

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Parsing PDFs using the pdfplumber Library.

PDF data extraction using pdfplumber in python

In this Tutorial, we will be looking the process of using the pdfplumber library in Python to parse PDFs. pdfplumber is a powerful library that allows for easy extraction of text and data from PDFs, making it a valuable tool for data analysis and automation tasks.

Step 1: Install the pdfplumber Library To begin, you will need to install the pdfplumber library. This can be done using pip by running the command:

pip install pdfplumber

Step 2: Import the library Once the library is installed, you can import it into your Python script by using the following command:

import pdfplumber

Step 3: Open the PDF To open a PDF, you will need to create a pdfplumber.PDF object by passing the path to the PDF file to the open() function. For example:

with pdfplumber.open("path/to/pdf") as pdf:

Step 4: Extract Text pdfplumber provides several methods for extracting text from a PDF. The simplest method is the extract_text() method, which returns a string containing all the text in the PDF. For example:

text = pdf.extract_text()
print(text)

Step 5: Extract Data pdfplumber also provides several methods for extracting data from a PDF. One such method is the extract_table() method, which returns a list of lists containing the data from tables in the PDF. For example:

tables = pdf.extract_table()
print(tables)

Step 6: Extract Images pdfplumber also allows you to extract images from a PDF. This can be done using the get_image() method, which returns an object containing the image data and meta-data. For example:

images = pdf.get_image()
print(images)

Complete Code:

import pdfplumber

# Open the PDF
with pdfplumber.open("path/to/pdf") as pdf:
# Extract the text
text = pdf.extract_text()
print(text)

# Extract the data
tables = pdf.extract_table()
for table in tables:
print(table)

# Extract the images
images = pdf.get_images()
for image in images:
print(image["page_number"])
with open(f"image_{image['page_number']}.jpg", "wb") as f:
f.write(image["data"])

In this guide, we have covered the basics of using the pdfplumber library to parse PDFs in Python. With pdfplumber, you can easily extract text, data, and images from PDFs, making it a valuable tool for data analysis and automation tasks you can use regular expression (RegExp ) to find particular text or string from extracted data.

You can now use this information to parse your own PDFs, and extract the information you need from it.

More Reference you Can watch This Video :

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Azhar Sayyad
Azhar Sayyad

Written by Azhar Sayyad

Just a software dev trying to make sense of the code chaos. Here to share the ‘wisdom’ I’ve picked up between debugging marathons.

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