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 -c flag) (more)
• Output as text or JSON (using the -j flag)
• Extract the PDF text (using the --text flag)
• 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 format

Releasing

• Update version number in setup.py and pdfx/__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:

• Timeout (see #43)
• Cuts off links that span two lines #40
• Include Check-Links Results in Output #39