pdflinkcheck 1.1.3

A purpose-built PDF link analysis reporting tool.

pdflinkcheck

A purpose-built tool for comprehensive analysis of hyperlinks and link remnants within PDF documents, primarily using the PyMuPDF library. Use the CLI or the GUI.

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Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The tool can be run using a simple cross-platform graphical interface (Tkinter):

To launch the GUI, use the command: pdflinkcheck-gui

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✨ Features

• Active Link Extraction: Identifies and categorizes all programmed links (External URIs, Internal GoTo/Destinations, Remote Jumps).
• Anchor Text Retrieval: Extracts the visible text corresponding to each link's bounding box.
• Remnant Detection: Scans the document's text layer for unlinked URIs and email addresses that should potentially be converted into active links.
• Structural TOC: Extracts the PDF's internal Table of Contents (bookmarks/outline).

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📥 Installation (Recommended via pipx)

The recommended way to install pdflinkcheck is using pipx, which installs Python applications in isolated environments, preventing dependency conflicts.

# Ensure you have pipx installed first (if not, run: pip install pipx)
pipx install pdflinkcheck

Note for Developers: If you prefer a traditional virtual environment or are developing locally, use pip:

# From the root of the project
pip install .

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🚀 Usage

The main command is pdflinkcheck analyze.

# Basic usage: Analyze a PDF and check for remnants (default behavior)
pdflinkcheck analyze "path/to/my/document.pdf"

Command Options

Option	Description	Default
<PDF_PATH>	Required. The path to the PDF file to analyze.	N/A
--check-remnants / --no-check-remnants	Toggle scanning the text layer for unlinked URLs/Emails.	--check-remnants
--max-links INTEGER	Maximum number of links/remnants to display in the detailed report sections.	50
--help	Show command help and exit.	N/A

Example Run

pdflinkcheck analyze "TE Maxson WWTF O&M Manual.pdf" --max-links 10

Run from source

git clone http://github.com/city-of-memphis-wastewater/pdflinkcheck.git
cd pdflinkcheck
uv sync
python src/pdflinkcheck/analyze.py

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⚠️ Platform Compatibility Note

This tool relies on the PyMuPDF library, which requires specific native dependencies (like MuPDF) that may not be available on all platforms.

Known Incompatibility: This tool is not officially supported and may fail to run on environments like Termux (Android) due to underlying C/C++ library compilation issues with PyMuPDF. It is recommended for use on standard Linux, macOS, or Windows operating systems.

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Document Compatibility

While pdflinkcheck uses the robust PyMuPDF library, not all PDF files can be processed successfully. This tool is designed primarily for digitally generated (vector-based) PDFs.

Processing may fail or yield incomplete results for:

• Scanned PDFs (images of text) that lack an accessible text layer.
• Encrypted or Password-Protected documents.
• Malformed or non-standard PDF files.