Node.js PDF Parse Library Tutorial to Extract Text & Meta Information From PDF Document in Command Line

Welcome folks today in this blog post we will be extracting the text and meta information from the given pdf document in node.js using the pdf parse library in command line. All the full source code of the application is shown below.

Get Started

In order to get started you need to initialize a new node.js project by executing the below command as shown below

npm init -y

npm i pdf-parse

Basic Example

Now we will be writing the basic example code for this node.js module. Just copy paste the below code inside the index.js file of your project

index.js

const fs = require('fs');
const pdf = require('pdf-parse');
 
let dataBuffer = fs.readFileSync('path to PDF file...');

const fs = require('fs');

const pdf = require('pdf-parse');

let dataBuffer = fs.readFileSync('path to PDF file...');

As you can see we are importing the pdf-parse and also the fs module as well for doing the reading and writing the files inside the local file system. And then we are making the variable for reading the pdf file from the path provided and this will hold the pdf file data in the form of the buffer object.

And now we need to read the meta information and extract the text from the pdf document as shown below

pdf(dataBuffer).then(function(data) {
 
    // number of pages
    console.log(data.numpages);
    // number of rendered pages
    console.log(data.numrender);
    // PDF info
    console.log(data.info);
    // PDF metadata
    console.log(data.metadata); 
    // PDF.js version
    // check https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/getting_started/
    console.log(data.version);
    // PDF text
    console.log(data.text); 
        
});

pdf(dataBuffer).then(function(data) {

// number of pages

console.log(data.numpages);

// number of rendered pages

console.log(data.numrender);

// PDF info

console.log(data.info);

// PDF metadata

console.log(data.metadata);

// PDF.js version

// check https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/getting_started/

console.log(data.version);

// PDF text

console.log(data.text);

});

As you can see we are passing the pdf document in the pdf-parse constructor and then we have the promise returned from this function and inside it we have the metadata which is returned as an argument. And then from this data we are getting the number of pages which are present inside the pdf document. And also we are getting the meta data of the pdf document. This is present inside the info property and then we are extracting the text from the pdf document. For this we are using the text property as shown above.