需要使用python从PDF文件中提取文本

Question

I am trying to extract text from a PDF file, but it gives an error

PdfReadError: Could not read malformed PDF file

Can anyone guide me with how to proceed with this? Here is the code

import os
import PyPDF2

dir_name='path to folder'
files=os.listdir(dir_name)
os.chdir(dir_name)
for j in files:
     print(j)
     print("In file")
     pdfFileObj = open(j, 'rb')
     pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
     print(pdfReader.numPages)
     pdfFile=pdfReader.getPage(0)
       
     #page_lines=pdfFile.extractText()
     print(pdfFile.extractText())
       
     pdfFileObj.close()

Answer 1

This might be something which is happening cause of the files in the directory you did chdir. Make sure it has no other files other than pdf files. Also try to extract files based on its extension, specially the .pdf . Here is similar code. Try executing it just for the files you found are malformed.

import PyPDF2
pdfFileObj = open('example.pdf', 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
print(pdfReader.numPages)
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
print(pageObj.extractText())
pdfFileObj.close()

Update

It is observed that this module PyPDF2 does not function properly. The module is only good for it's (.numPages) method. Other methods may or may not work as expected, while sometimes returning nothing.

Try PdfMiner for robust extraction. It has a lot of options to explore. pdfminer