oxidize-pdf

The Rust PDF library built for AI. Parse any PDF into structure-aware, embedding-ready chunks with one line of code. Pure Rust, zero C dependencies, 99.3% success rate on 9,000+ real-world PDFs.

let chunks = PdfDocument::open("paper.pdf")?.rag_chunks()?;
// Each chunk: text, pages, bounding boxes, element types, heading context, token estimate

Why oxidize-pdf for RAG?

Most PDF libraries give you a wall of text. oxidize-pdf gives you structured, metadata-rich chunks ready for your vector store:

| What you get | Why it matters | |---|---| | chunk.full_text | Heading context prepended -- better embeddings | | chunk.page_numbers | Citation back to source pages | | chunk.bounding_boxes | Spatial position for visual grounding | | chunk.element_types | Filter by "table", "title", "paragraph" | | chunk.token_estimate | Right-size chunks for your model's context window | | chunk.heading_context | Section awareness without post-processing |

Performance: Pure Rust, 3,000-4,000 pages/sec generation, 85ms full-text extraction for a 930KB PDF.

Quick Start

[dependencies]
oxidize-pdf = "2.3"

RAG Pipeline -- One Liner

use oxidize_pdf::parser::PdfDocument;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let doc = PdfDocument::open("document.pdf")?;

    // Structure-aware chunking with full metadata
    let chunks = doc.rag_chunks()?;

    for chunk in &chunks {
        println!("Chunk {}: pages {:?}, ~{} tokens",
            chunk.chunk_index, chunk.page_numbers, chunk.token_estimate);
        println!("  Types: {}", chunk.element_types.join(", "));
        if let Some(heading) = &chunk.heading_context {
            println!("  Section: {}", heading);
        }

        // Use chunk.full_text for embeddings (includes heading context)
        // Use chunk.text for display (content only)
    }

    Ok(())
}

Custom Chunk Size

use oxidize_pdf::pipeline::HybridChunkConfig;

// Smaller chunks for more precise retrieval
let config = HybridChunkConfig {
    max_tokens: 256,
    ..HybridChunkConfig::default()
};
let chunks = doc.rag_chunks_with(config)?;

JSON for Vector Store Ingestion

// Serialize all chunks to JSON (requires `semantic` feature)
let json = doc.rag_chunks_json()?;
std::fs::write("chunks.json", json)?;

Element Partitioning

For fine-grained control, access the typed element pipeline directly:

use oxidize_pdf::pipeline::ExtractionProfile;

let doc = PdfDocument::open("document.pdf")?;

// Partition into typed elements
let elements = doc.partition()?;
for el in &elements {
    println!("page {} : {}", el.page(), el.text());
}

// Or with a pre-configured profile
let elements = doc.partition_with_profile(ExtractionProfile::Academic)?;

// Build a relationship graph (parent/child sections)
let (elements, graph) = doc.partition_graph(Default::default())?;
for section in graph.top_level_sections() {
    println!("Section: {}", elements[section].text());
}

Beyond RAG

oxidize-pdf is a full-featured PDF library. Everything below works alongside the RAG pipeline.

PDF Generation

use oxidize_pdf::{Document, Page, Font, Color, Result};

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    let mut doc = Document::new();
    let mut page = Page::a4();

    page.text()
        .set_font(Font::Helvetica, 24.0)
        .at(50.0, 700.0)
        .write("Hello, PDF!")?;

    page.graphics()
        .set_fill_color(Color::rgb(0.0, 0.5, 1.0))
        .circle(300.0, 400.0, 50.0)
        .fill();

    doc.add_page(page);
    doc.save("hello.pdf")?;
    Ok(())
}

PDF Parsing

use oxidize_pdf::parser::{PdfReader, PdfDocument};

let doc = PdfDocument::open("document.pdf")?;
let text = doc.extract_text()?;
for (i, page) in text.iter().enumerate() {
    println!("Page {}: {}", i + 1, &page.text[..80.min(page.text.len())]);
}

Encryption (Read + Write)

use oxidize_pdf::{Document, Page, DocumentEncryption, Permissions, EncryptionStrength};

// Write encrypted PDFs
let mut doc = Document::new();
doc.add_page(Page::a4());
doc.set_encryption(DocumentEncryption::new(
    "user_password", "owner_password",
    Permissions::all(), EncryptionStrength::Aes256,
));
doc.save("encrypted.pdf")?;

// Read encrypted PDFs
let mut reader = PdfReader::open("encrypted.pdf")?;
reader.unlock("user_password")?;

Invoice Extraction

use oxidize_pdf::text::invoice::InvoiceExtractor;

let doc = PdfDocument::open("invoice.pdf")?;
let text = doc.extract_text()?;
let extractor = InvoiceExtractor::builder()
    .with_language("es")
    .build();
let invoice = extractor.extract(&text[0].fragments)?;
// invoice.fields: invoice number, dates, amounts, VAT, line items

PDF Operations

use oxidize_pdf::operations::{PdfSplitter, PdfMerger, PageRange};

// Split
PdfSplitter::new("input.pdf")?.split_by_pages("page_{}.pdf")?;

// Merge
let mut merger = PdfMerger::new();
merger.add_pdf("doc1.pdf", PageRange::All)?;
merger.add_pdf("doc2.pdf", PageRange::Pages(vec![1, 3]))?;
merger.save("merged.pdf")?;

Full Feature Set

AI/RAG Pipeline

Structure-aware chunking with RagChunk metadata (pages, bboxes, types, headings)
Element partitioning: Title, Paragraph, Table, ListItem, Image, CodeBlock, KeyValue
ElementGraph for parent/child section relationships
6 extraction profiles (Standard, Academic, Form, Government, Dense, Presentation)
Reading order strategies (Simple, XYCut)
LLM-optimized export formats (Markdown, Contextual, JSON)
Invoice data extraction (ES, EN, DE, IT)

PDF Processing

Parse PDF 1.0-1.7 with 99.3% success rate (9,000+ PDFs tested)
Generate multi-page documents with text, graphics, images
Encryption: RC4-40/128, AES-128, AES-256 (R5/R6) -- read and write
Digital signatures: detection, PKCS#7 verification, certificate validation
PDF/A validation: 8 conformance levels (1a/b, 2a/b/u, 3a/b/u)
JBIG2 decoder: pure Rust (ITU-T T.88)
OCR via Tesseract (optional feature)
Split, merge, rotate operations
CJK text support (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
Corruption recovery and lenient parsing
Decompression bomb protection

Performance

| Operation | Speed | |---|---| | PDF generation | 3,000-4,000 pages/sec | | Full text extraction (930KB) | 85 ms | | Page text extraction | 546 us | | File loading | 738 us |

Benchmarked with Criterion. Baseline: v2.0.0-profiling.

Testing

7,993 tests across unit, integration, and doc tests. 7-tier corpus (T0-T6) with 9,000+ PDFs.

cargo test --workspace         # Full test suite
cargo clippy -- -D warnings    # Lint check
cargo run --example rag_pipeline -- path/to/file.pdf

License

MIT -- see LICENSE.

OxidizePdf

Install / Use

README