Several pdf files to text

[deanhystad]

Do you have code that works for 1 file? I would convert that to a function and call the function for each pdf file. The process of calling a function to process a file will be trivial.

I have not tested this code at all, but provide it as an example of how I would split up this task.

import sys
import os
from pytesseract import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

POPPLER = r'C:\Program Files\poppler-0.68.0_x86\poppler-0.68.0\bin'
pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = r'C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe'

def pdf_to_text(pdf_file, text_file, lang='fra'):
    """Use OCR to convert PDF file to text."""
    images = convert_from_path(pdf_file, poppler_path=POPPLER)
    with open(text_file, 'w') as out_file:
        for image in images:
            text = pytesseract.image_to_string(image, lang =lang)
            out_file.write(text.replace("\n", " "))

def pdf_files_to_text(folder, out_folder=None):
    """Using OCR convert all PDF files in folder to text files.  Text
    files are saved in out_folder (defaults to folder) using same name
    with extension changed to .txt
    """
    if out_folder is None:
        out_folder = folder
    for file in os.listdir(folder):
        if file.endswith('.png'):
            pdf_to_text(folder+file, out_folder+file[:-3]+'txt')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pdf_files_to_text(os.getcwd())

First I solve the real problem: converting a PDF file to text. This is a useful task, so I write a function that does this task.

Next I write a function that will convert all the pdf files in a folder into text files. This too is a useful task, so I write it as a function that can be called by other code.