pdf-miner-test.py

from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFParser, PDFDocument
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, PDFPageInterpreter
from pdfminer.pdfdevice import PDFDevice

# Open a PDF file.
fp = open('mypdf.pdf', 'rb')
# Create a PDF parser object associated with the file object.
parser = PDFParser(fp)
# Create a PDF document object that stores the document structure.
doc = PDFDocument()
# Connect the parser and document objects.
parser.set_document(doc)
doc.set_parser(parser)
# Supply the password for initialization.
password = ""
# (If no password is set, give an empty string.)
doc.initialize(password)
# Check if the document allows text extraction. If not, abort.
if not doc.is_extractable:
    raise PDFTextExtractionNotAllowed
# Create a PDF resource manager object that stores shared resources.
rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
# Create a PDF device object.
device = PDFDevice(rsrcmgr)
# Create a PDF interpreter object.
interpreter = PDFPageInterpreter(rsrcmgr, device)
# Process each page contained in the document.
for page in doc.get_pages():
    interpreter.process_page(page)
    
#The following code, from StackOverlow, extracts the text as a string from the pdf
from pdfminer.pdfinterp import PDFResourceManager, process_pdf
from pdfminer.converter import TextConverter
from pdfminer.layout import LAParams
from cStringIO import StringIO

def convert_pdf(path):
    rsrcmgr = PDFResourceManager()
    retstr = StringIO()
    codec = 'utf-8'
    laparams = LAParams()
    device = TextConverter(rsrcmgr, retstr, codec=codec, laparams=laparams)

    fp = file(path, 'rb')
    process_pdf(rsrcmgr, device, fp)
    fp.close()
    device.close()

    str = retstr.getvalue()
    retstr.close()
    return str