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Convert documents (pdf, djvu, epub, word) to txt

The script convert_to_txt.py converts documents (pdf, djvu, epub, word) to txt.

This is a partial Python port of convert-to-txt.sh (minus OCR) from ebook-tools written in shell by na--.

⭐ Other related Python projects based on ebook-tools:

  • find-isbns: find ISBNs from ebooks (pdf, djvu, epub) or any string given as input to the script
  • ocr: run OCR on documents (pdf, djvu, and images)
  • split-ebooks-into-folders: split the supplied ebook files into folders with consecutive names
  • organize-ebooks: automatically organize folders with potentially huge amounts of unorganized ebooks. It leverages the previous Python scripts (minus split_into_folders).

Dependencies

This is the environment on which the script convert_to_txt.py was tested:

  • Platform: macOS

  • Python: version 3.7

  • textutil or catdoc: for converting doc to txt

    NOTE: On macOS, you don't need catdoc since it has the built-in textutil command-line tool that converts any txt, html, rtf, rtfd, doc, docx, wordml, odt, or webarchive file

  • DjVuLibre: it includes djvutxt for converting djvu to txt

    ⚠️

    • To access the djvu command line utilities and their documentation, you must set the shell variable PATH and MANPATH appropriately. This can be achieved by invoking a convenient shell script hidden inside the application bundle:

      $ eval `/Applications/DjView.app/Contents/setpath.sh`

      Ref.: ReadMe from DjVuLibre

    • You need to softlink djvutxt in /user/local/bin (or add it in $PATH)

  • poppler: it includes pdftotext for converting pdf to txt

ℹ️ epub can be converted to txt by using unzip -c {input_file} but it is not a cleaned conversion since HTML data are also included.

Optionally:

  • calibre: for converting {pdf, djvu, epub, msword} to txt by using calibre's ebook-convert

    ⚠️ ebook-convert is slower than the other conversion tools (textutil, catdoc, pdftotext, djvutxt)

Installation

  1. Install first the dependencies.

  2. Then you can install the convert_to_txt package:

    $ pip install git+https://github.com/raul23/convert-to-txt#egg=convert-to-txt

Test installation

  1. Test your installation by importing convert_to_txt and printing its version:

    $ python -c "import convert_to_txt; print(convert_to_txt.__version__)"

  2. You can also test that you have access to the convert_to_txt.py script by showing the program's version:

    $ convert_to_txt --version

Uninstall

To uninstall the convert_to_txt package:

$ pip uninstall convert_to_txt

Script options

To display the script convert_to_txt.py list of options and their descriptions:

$ convert_to_txt -h
usage: convert_to_txt [OPTIONS] {input_file} [{output_file}]

Convert documents (pdf, djvu, epub, word) to txt.

General options:
  -h, --help                                Show this help message and exit.
  -v, --version                             Show program's version number and exit.
  -q, --quiet                               Enable quiet mode, i.e. nothing will be printed.
  --verbose                                 Print various debugging information, e.g. print traceback when there is an exception.
  --log-level {debug,info,warning,error}    Set logging level. (default: info)
  --log-format {console,only_msg,simple}    Set logging formatter. (default: only_msg)

Convert-to-txt options:
  -p, --pages PAGES                         "Specify which pages should be processed. When this option is not specified,
                                            the text of all pages of the documents is concatenated into the output file.
                                            The page specification PAGES contains one or more comma-separated page ranges.
                                            A page range is either a page number, or two page numbers separated by a dash.
                                            For instance, specification 1-10 outputs pages 1 to 10, and specification
                                            1,3,99999-4 outputs pages 1 and 3, followed by all the document pages in reverse
                                            order up to page 4."
                                            Ref.: https://man.archlinux.org/man/djvutxt.1.en
  --djvu {djvutxt,ebook-convert}            Set the conversion method for djvu documents. (default: djvutxt)
  --epub {ebook-convert,epubtxt}            Set the conversion method for epub documents. (default: ebook-convert)
  --msword {textutil,catdoc,ebook-convert}  Set the conversion method for msword documents. (default: textutil)
  --pdf {pdftotext,ebook-convert}           Set the conversion method for pdf documents. (default: pdftotext)

Input/Output files:
  input                                     Path of the file (pdf, djvu, epub, word) that will be converted to txt.
  output                                    Path of the output txt file. (default: output.txt)

ℹ️ Explaining some of the options/arguments

  • The option -p, --pages is taken straight from djvutxt option --page=pagespec.

    ⚠️ Things to watch out when using the -p option

    • If the option -p is not used, then by default all pages from the given document will be converted.
    • If the given document is not a pdf or djvu file, then the option -p will be ignored.

  • input and output are positional arguments. Thus they must follow directly each other. output is not required since by default the output txt file will be saved as output.txt directly under the working directory.

    ⚠️ output needs to have a .txt extension!

How the conversion is applied

Here are the important steps that the script convert_to_txt.py follows when converting a given document to txt:

  1. If the given document is already in .txt, then no need to go further!
  2. According to the mime type, the corresponding conversion tool is called upon:
    1. image/vnd.djvu: djvutxt
    2. application/epub+zip: unzip
    3. application/msword: catdoc or textutil
    4. application/pdf: pdftotext
    5. ebook-convert if the other conversion tools are not found
  3. The output txt file is checked if it actually contains text. If it doesn't, the user is warned that the conversion failed.

Files supported

These are the files that are supported for conversion to txt and the corresponding conversion tools used:

Files supported Conversion tool #1 Conversion tool #2 Conversion tool #3
pdf pdftotext ebook-convert (calibre)
djvu djvutxt ebook-convert (calibre)
epub ebook-convert (calibre) epubtxt
docx (Word 2007) ebook-convert (calibre)
doc (Word 97) textutil (macOS) catdoc ebook-convert (calibre)
rtf ebook-convert (calibre)

ℹ️ Some explanations about the table

  • epubtxt is a fancy way to say unzip.
  • By default, ebook-convert (calibre) is used for converting epub to txt because it does a better job than epubtxt since epubtxt also includes HTML data.

For comparison, here are the times taken to convert completely a 154-pages PDF document to txt for both supported conversion methods:

  • pdftotext: 4.27s
  • ebook-convert (calibre): 80.91s

Example: convert a pdf file to txt

Through the script convert_to_txt.py

Let's say you want to convert specific pages of a pdf file to txt, then the following command will do the trick:

convert_to_txt ~/Data/convert/K.pdf K.txt -p 15-10,3,23-30

ℹ️ Explaining the command

  • -p 15-10,3,23-30: specifies that pages 15 to 10 (reverse order), 3 and 23 to 30 from the given pdf document will be converted to txt.

    ⚠️ No spaces when specifying the pages.

  • ~/Data/convert/K.pdf K.txt: these are the input and output files, respectively.

    NOTE: by default if no output file is specified, then the resultant text will be saved as output.txt directly under the working directory.

Sample output:

Starting document conversion to txt...
Conversion successful!

Through the API

To convert a pdf file to txt using the API:

from convert_to_txt.lib import convert

txt = convert('/Users/test/Data/convert/B.pdf', convert_pages='10-12')
# Do something with `txt`

ℹ️ Explaining the snippet of code

  • convert(input_file, output_file=None, convert_pages=CONVERT_PAGES):

    By default output_file is None and hence convert() will return the text from the conversion. If you set output_file to for example output.txt, then convert() will just return a status code (1 for error and 0 for success) and will write the text from the conversion to output.txt.

  • The variable txt will contain the text from the conversion.

By default when using the API, the loggers are disabled. If you want to enable them, call the function setup_log() (with the desired log level in all caps) at the beginning of your code before the conversion function convert():

from convert_pages.lib import convert, setup_log

setup_log(logging_level='DEBUG')
txt = convert('/Users/test/Data/convert/B.pdf', convert_pages='10-12')
# Do something with `txt`

Sample output:

Running /Users/test/miniconda3/envs/mlpy37/lib/python3.7/site-packages/convert_to_txt/lib.py v0.1.0
Verbose option disabled
mime type: application/pdf
Output text file already exists: output.txt
Full path of output text file: '/Users/test/convert_to_txt/test_installation/output.txt'
Starting document conversion to txt...
The file looks like a pdf, using pdftotext to extract the text
These are all the pages that need to be converted: 10-12
Pages to process: [10, 11, 12]
Processing page 1 of 3
Page number: 10
Using tmp file /var/folders/b8/k1ndbdn53zs1m078zwwrbc4w0000gn/T/tmpc9ma3mwr.txt
Result of 'pdftotext':
stdout=, stderr=, returncode=0, args=['pdftotext', '/Users/test/Data/convert/B.pdf',
'/var/folders/b8/k1ndbdn53zs1m078zwwrbc4w0000gn/T/tmpc9ma3mwr.txt', '-f', '10', '-l', '10']
Cleaning up tmp file

Finally, just like you can set the conversion method via the command-line, you can also do it via the API:

from convert_pages.lib import convert

txt = convert('/Users/test/Data/convert/B.pdf', convert_pages='10-12', pdf_convert_method='ebook-convert')

ℹ️ The full signature for the function convert():

convert(input_file, output_file=None,
        convert_pages=None,
        djvu_convert_method='djvutxt',
        epub_convert_method='epubtxt',
        msword_convert_method='textutil',
        pdf_convert_method='pdftotext', **kwargs)