cauethenorio Overview
Extract text from PDF files using uvx pdfplumber. No package installation required — uvx runs directly from PyPI.
First usage
Before running any command, verify uvx is available:
uvx --version
If not installed, install uv first: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
Quick reference
# Text from all pages
uvx pdfplumber file.pdf --format text
# Specific pages (1-indexed)
uvx pdfplumber file.pdf --format text --pages 1 3 5
# Structured data (JSON with position of each character)
uvx pdfplumber file.pdf --format json --pages 1
# Document tree with text
uvx pdfplumber file.pdf --structure-text --pages 1
Options
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
--format text |
Plain text (best for general reading) |
--format json |
JSON with element attributes (position, font, size) |
--format csv |
CSV of elements |
--pages N [N ...] |
Specific pages, 1-indexed. No flag = all |
--structure-text |
Structural tree of the PDF with text (useful for tagged PDFs) |
--types char line rect |
Filter element types (for JSON/CSV) |
When to use each format
--format text: general reading, extracting data from reports, searching for values--format json: when you need exact element positions (e.g. poorly formatted tables)--structure-text: returns semantic tree (Div, H2, P) but without inline text — rarely useful in practice
Common mistakes
- File as second argument: the file must come BEFORE flags (
uvx pdfplumber file.pdf --format text, notuvx pdfplumber --format text file.pdf --pages 1) - 0-indexed pages: pages are 1-indexed, not 0-indexed. Page 0 returns empty
- PDF without text: scanned PDFs (images) return empty. In that case, use OCR