PDF Table Extractor Documentation

Release 0.1.2

Michał Pasternak

May 31, 2017

 Contents

1 PDF Table Extractor 3

1.1 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 See Also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Installation 5
2.1 Stable release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 From sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Usage 7

4 Contributing 9
4.1 Types of Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2 Get Started! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3 Pull Request Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4 Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

5 Indices and tables 13

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Contents:

Contents 1
PDF Table Extractor Documentation, Release 0.1.2

2 Contents
 CHAPTER 1

PDF Table Extractor

Extract table data from PDFs

• Free software: MIT license
• Documentation: https://pdf-table-extractor.readthedocs.io.

Features

• this software should be able to automaticall extract tabular data from PDF files,
• tables must have some visual bounds in form of horizontal and vertical lines.

See Also

• Tabula - similar goal, much more advanced project - extract table data from PDFs in Ruby, including GUI

Credits

This package was created with Cookiecutter and the audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage project template.

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4 Chapter 1. PDF Table Extractor

 CHAPTER 2

Installation

Stable release

To install PDF Table Extractor, run this command in your terminal:

$ pip install pdf_table_extractor

$ # to install with XLS file support
$ pip install pdf_table_extractor[xls]

This is the preferred method to install PDF Table Extractor, as it will always install the most recent stable release.
If you don’t have pip installed, this Python installation guide can guide you through the process.

From sources

The sources for PDF Table Extractor can be downloaded from the Github repo.
You can either clone the public repository:

$ git clone git://github.com/mpasternak/pdf-table-extractor

Or download the tarball:

$ curl -OL https://github.com/mpasternak/pdf-table-extractor/tarball/master

Once you have a copy of the source, you can install it with:

$ python setup.py install

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 CHAPTER 3

Usage

To use PDF Table Extractor in a project:

from pdf_table_extractor.pdf_table_extractor import extract_table_data

tables = extract_table_data(open("test.pdf", "rb")).get_document()

Or, use CLI command:

$ pdf_extract_tables input.pdf output.xls --format=xls --verbose=3

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 CHAPTER 4

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.
You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/mpasternak/pdf_table_extractor/issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:
• Your operating system name and version.
• Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
• Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants
to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” and “help wanted” is open to
whoever wants to implement it.

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Write Documentation

PDF Table Extractor could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official PDF Table Extractor docs,
in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/mpasternak/pdf_table_extractor/issues.

If you are proposing a feature:
• Explain in detail how it would work.
• Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
• Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome :)

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up pdf_table_extractor for local development.

1. Fork the pdf_table_extractor repo on GitHub.
2. Clone your fork locally:

$ git clone [email protected]:your_name_here/pdf_table_extractor.git

3. Install your local copy into a virtualenv. Assuming you have virtualenvwrapper installed, this is how you set up
your fork for local development:

$ mkvirtualenv pdf_table_extractor
$ cd pdf_table_extractor/
$ python setup.py develop

4. Create a branch for local development:

$ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

Now you can make your changes locally.

5. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests, including testing other
Python versions with tox:

$ flake8 pdf_table_extractor tests

$ python setup.py test or py.test
$ tox

To get flake8 and tox, just pip install them into your virtualenv.
6. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
$ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

7. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

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Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:
1. The pull request should include tests.
2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function
with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.
3. The pull request should work for Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5, and for PyPy. Check https://travis-ci.
org/mpasternak/pdf_table_extractor/pull_requests and make sure that the tests pass for all supported Python
versions.

Tips

To run a subset of tests:

$ py.test tests.test_pdf_table_extractor

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 CHAPTER 5

Indices and tables

• genindex
• modindex
• search

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