Extract Data From PDF In Python

In this project, we are going to batch-convert pdf files to text and extract data without using PyPDF2/4.

We're going to achieve that by:

• Using PDFtoText converter from XPdf to convert pdf files to text files
• Using regular expressions to extract data
• Performing data cleaning using pandas
• Exporting to Excel file

Why Not Use PyPDF2/4

Short Answer: I got this error:

TypeError: object of type 'IndirectObject' has no len()

Long Answer: If PyPDF4 had worked I would never have had a chance to explore other ways. I looked on StackOverflow however couldn't find a solution for this error. Obviously, there had to be someone with the same problem but there's no solution.

I was not willing to manually copy and paste the information from 52 of my payslips. Isn't that what programs are used for?

Table of Contents

• Packages
• Converting PDF To Text
• Script Link

Packages

• Pandas

  Check out the requirements.txt

Converting PDF To Text

Converting PDF to text using Xpdf's pdftotext is really simple.

Using this command-line tool we can batch-convert PDFs to text files.

pdftotext source.pdf dest.txt

Script Link

Script Link: parse_payslips.py