PDFx
Introduction
Extract references (pdf, url, doi, arxiv) and metadata from a PDF. Optionally download all referenced PDFs and check for broken links.
Features
- Extract references and metadata from a given PDF
- Detects pdf, url, arxiv and doi references
- Fast, parallel download of all referenced PDFs
- Find broken hyperlinks (using the
-cflag) (more) - Output as text or JSON (using the
-jflag) - Extract the PDF text (using the
--textflag) - Use as command-line tool or Python package
- Compatible with Python 2 and 3
- Works with local and online pdfs
Getting Started
Grab a copy of the code with easy_install or pip, and run it:
$ sudo easy_install -U pdfx
...
$ pdfx <pdf-file-or-url>
Run pdfx -h to see the help output:
$ pdfx -h
usage: pdfx [-h] [-d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY] [-c] [-j] [-v] [-t] [-o OUTPUT_FILE]
[--version]
pdf
Extract metadata and references from a PDF, and optionally download all
referenced PDFs. Visit https://www.metachris.com/pdfx for more information.
positional arguments:
pdf Filename or URL of a PDF file
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, --download-pdfs OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
Download all referenced PDFs into specified directory
-c, --check-links Check for broken links
-j, --json Output infos as JSON (instead of plain text)
-v, --verbose Print all references (instead of only PDFs)
-t, --text Only extract text (no metadata or references)
-o OUTPUT_FILE, --output-file OUTPUT_FILE
Output to specified file instead of console
--version show program's version number and exit
Examples
Lets take a look at this paper: https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf:
$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf
Document infos:
- CreationDate = D:20150821110623-04'00'
- Creator = LaTeX with hyperref package
- ModDate = D:20150821110805-04'00'
- PTEX.Fullbanner = This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian) kpathsea version 6.1.1
- Pages = 13
- Producer = pdfTeX-1.40.14
- Title = Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice
- Trapped = False
- dc = {'title': {'x-default': 'Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice'}, 'creator': [None], 'description': {'x-default': None}, 'format': 'application/pdf'}
- pdf = {'Keywords': None, 'Producer': 'pdfTeX-1.40.14', 'Trapped': 'False'}
- pdfx = {'PTEX.Fullbanner': 'This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian) kpathsea version 6.1.1'}
- xap = {'CreateDate': '2015-08-21T11:06:23-04:00', 'ModifyDate': '2015-08-21T11:08:05-04:00', 'CreatorTool': 'LaTeX with hyperref package', 'MetadataDate': '2015-08-21T11:08:05-04:00'}
- xapmm = {'InstanceID': 'uuid:4e570f88-cd0f-4488-85ad-03f4435a4048', 'DocumentID': 'uuid:98988d37-b43d-4c1a-965b-988dfb2944b6'}
References: 36
- URL: 18
- PDF: 18
PDF References:
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35533.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35513.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35509.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35529.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35527.pdf
- http://cr.yp.to/factorization/smoothparts-20040510.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35517.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35526.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35519.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35522.pdf
- http://cryptome.org/2013/08/spy-budget-fy13.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35514.pdf
- http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/SHARCS/talks06/thorsten.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35528.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35671.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35520.pdf
- http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35551.pdf
You can use the -v flag to output all references instead of just the
PDFs.
Download all referenced pdfs with -d (for download-pdfs) to the
specified directory (eg. to /tmp/):
$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf -d /tmp/
...
To extract text, you can use the -t flag:
# Extract text to console
$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf -t
# Extract text to file
$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf -t -o pdf-text.txt
To check for broken links use the -c flag:
$ pdfx https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy.pdf -c
[Example (with video) of checking for broken links](https://www.metachris.com/2016/03/find-broken-hyperlinks-in-a-pdf-document-with-pdfx/).
Usage as Python library
>>> import pdfx
>>> pdf = pdfx.PDFx("filename-or-url.pdf")
>>> metadata = pdf.get_metadata()
>>> references_list = pdf.get_references()
>>> references_dict = pdf.get_references_as_dict()
>>> pdf.download_pdfs("target-directory")
Dev & Contributing
# Setup venv
python3 -m venv
venv . venv/bin/activate
# Install PDFx and dev deps
pip install -e .
pip install -r requirements_dev.txt
# Run tests and checks
make test
make lint
make check
# Format the code (with black)
make formatReleasing
- Update version number in
setup.pyandpdfx/__init__.py - Create a git tag starting with
v(eg.git tag v1.5.9) - Push the tag to GitHub:
git push --tags
GitHub Actions is then publishing to PyPI.
Various
- Author: Chris Hager twitter.com/metachris
- Homepage: https://www.metachris.com/pdfx
- License: Apache
Feedback, ideas and pull requests are welcome!
Improvement Ideas
Possible: