How can Python extract PDF text and print new lines?

To extract text from a PDF and preserve new lines in Python, you can use libraries like PyPDF2 or pdfplumber. These libraries can parse the PDF structure and extract text content, including line breaks. Here’s how to do it with each of these libraries:

Using PyPDF2

PyPDF2 is a popular library, though it might not always preserve the exact formatting with new lines perfectly. It works well for many basic text extractions.

Steps:

1. Install PyPDF2: pip install PyPDF2

2. Here's the python code:

import PyPDF2

def extract_text_with_newlines_pypdf2(pdf_path):
    text = ""
    with open(pdf_path, 'rb') as file:
        reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(file)
        for page_num in range(len(reader.pages)):
            page = reader.pages[page_num]
            text += page.extract_text()
    return text

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pdf_file = 'example.pdf' # Replace with your PDF file path
    extracted_text = extract_text_with_newlines_pypdf2(pdf_file)
    print(extracted_text)


Using pdfplumber

pdfplumber is more robust and generally better at preserving line breaks, tables, and other document structures.

Steps:

1. Install pdfplumber: pip install pdfplumber

2. Here is the Python code:

import pdfplumber

def extract_text_with_newlines_pdfplumber(pdf_path):
    text = ""
    with pdfplumber.open(pdf_path) as pdf:
        for page in pdf.pages:
            text += page.extract_text()
    return text

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pdf_file = 'example.pdf' # Replace with your PDF file path
    extracted_text = extract_text_with_newlines_pdfplumber(pdf_file)
    print(extracted_text)


Key Considerations:

- OCR for Scanned Documents: If the PDF is a scanned document (image-based), these libraries will not work out-of-the-box. You'll need to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to extract the text. Libraries like `pytesseract` (requires Tesseract OCR engine) can help with this.

- Text Encoding: Sometimes, extracted text may have encoding issues. You might need to decode and encode text using the correct character set (e.g., UTF-8) to display them properly.

By using either PyPDF2 or pdfplumber, you can extract text from PDFs while retaining most of the new line characters, making it easier to use the text data in further processing or analysis.

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