pyxtxt 0.2.3

A Python library for extracting text from different types of files (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODT, ecc.).

PyxTxt

PyxTxt is a simple and powerful Python library to extract text from various file formats.
It supports PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, HTML, XML, TXT, legacy Office files, audio transcription, OCR from images, and more.

NEW in v0.2.3+: Added audio transcription (Whisper) and OCR from images (EasyOCR)!

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✨ Features

• Multiple input types: File paths, io.BytesIO buffers, raw bytes objects, and requests.Response objects
• Wide format support: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODT, HTML, XML, TXT, Markdown, EPUB, RTF, EML, MSG, LaTeX, legacy Office files (.xls, .ppt, .doc)
• Audio transcription: MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC and more using OpenAI Whisper
• OCR from images: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP using EasyOCR with multilingual support
• Automatic MIME detection: Uses python-magic for intelligent file type recognition
• Web-ready: Direct support for downloading and extracting text from URLs
• Memory efficient: Process files without saving to disk
• Modern Python: Full type hints and clean API design

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📦 Installation

The library is modular so you can install all modules:

pip install pyxtxt[all]

or just the modules you need:

pip install pyxtxt[pdf,docx,presentation,spreadsheet,html,markdown,epub,email]

Audio & OCR (Heavy Dependencies)

# Audio transcription (~2GB download for Whisper models)
pip install pyxtxt[audio]

# OCR from images (~1GB download for EasyOCR models)
pip install pyxtxt[ocr]

# Both audio and OCR
pip install pyxtxt[audio,ocr]

Because needed libraries are common, installing the html module will also enable SVG and XML support. The architecture is designed to grow with new modules for additional formats.

⚠️ Note: You must have libmagic installed on your system (required by python-magic).

The pyproject.toml file should select the correct version for your system. But if you have any problem you can install it manually.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libmagic1

On Mac (Homebrew):

brew install libmagic

On Windows:

Use python-magic-bin instead of python-magic for easier installation.

🛠️ Dependencies

Core Dependencies

• python-magic (automatic file type detection)

Optional Dependencies by Format

• PDF: PyMuPDF
• Office: python-docx, python-pptx, openpyxl, xlrd
• Web/HTML: beautifulsoup4, lxml
• OpenDocument: odfpy
• Markdown: markdown
• EPUB: ebooklib
• RTF: striprtf
• Email: extract-msg (for MSG files)
• LaTeX: pylatexenc
• Audio: openai-whisper (heavy ~2GB models)
• OCR: easyocr, pillow (heavy ~1GB models)

Dependencies are automatically installed based on selected optional groups.

📚 Usage Examples

Basic Usage

from pyxtxt import xtxt

# Extract from file path
text = xtxt("document.pdf")
print(text)

# Extract from BytesIO buffer
import io
with open("document.docx", "rb") as f:
    buffer = io.BytesIO(f.read())
text = xtxt(buffer)
print(text)

NEW: Web Content Support

import requests
from pyxtxt import xtxt, xtxt_from_url

# Method 1: Direct from bytes
response = requests.get("https://example.com/document.pdf")
text = xtxt(response.content)

# Method 2: Direct from Response object  
text = xtxt(response)

# Method 3: URL helper function
text = xtxt_from_url("https://example.com/document.pdf")

Audio Transcription (NEW)

from pyxtxt import xtxt

# Transcribe audio files
text = xtxt("meeting_recording.mp3")
text = xtxt("interview.wav")
text = xtxt("podcast.m4a")

# From web audio
import requests
audio_response = requests.get("https://example.com/audio.mp3")
text = xtxt(audio_response.content)

OCR from Images (NEW)

from pyxtxt import xtxt

# Extract text from images
text = xtxt("scanned_document.png")
text = xtxt("screenshot.jpg")
text = xtxt("invoice.tiff")

# From web images
import requests
image_response = requests.get("https://example.com/document.png")
text = xtxt(image_response.content)

Show Available Formats

from pyxtxt import extxt_available_formats

# List supported MIME types
formats = extxt_available_formats()
print(formats)

# Pretty format names
formats = extxt_available_formats(pretty=True)
print(formats)

🌐 Common Web Use Cases

# API responses
api_response = requests.post("https://api.example.com/generate-pdf")
text = xtxt(api_response.content)

# File uploads (Flask/Django)
uploaded_bytes = request.files['document'].read()
text = xtxt(uploaded_bytes)

# Audio/video transcription services
audio_response = requests.get("https://api.example.com/recording.mp3")
transcript = xtxt(audio_response.content)

# OCR for uploaded images
image_bytes = request.files['receipt'].read()
text = xtxt(image_bytes)

# Email attachments
attachment_bytes = email_msg.get_payload(decode=True)
text = xtxt(attachment_bytes)

⚠️ Known Limitations

• Legacy file detection: When using raw streams without filenames, legacy files (.doc, .xls, .ppt) may not be correctly detected due to identical file signatures in libmagic
• Filename hints recommended: When available, providing original filenames improves detection accuracy
• MSWrite .doc files: Require antiword installation:

  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install antiword
  

📖 Full Examples

See examples.py for comprehensive usage examples including:

• Local file processing
• Memory buffer handling
• Web content extraction
• Error handling patterns
• All supported formats demonstration

Accessing Examples After Installation

After installing PyxTxt from PyPI, you can access the examples file:

import pkg_resources

# Get path to examples file
examples_path = pkg_resources.resource_filename('pyxtxt', 'examples.py')
print(f"Examples file location: {examples_path}")

# Or read the content directly
examples_content = pkg_resources.resource_string('pyxtxt', 'examples.py').decode('utf-8')
print(examples_content)

🔒 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE file for details.

The software is provided "as is" without any warranty of any kind.

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests, issues, and feedback are warmly welcome! 🚀

• Bug reports: Please include file samples and error details
• Feature requests: Describe your use case and expected behavior
• Code contributions: Follow existing patterns and add tests

📊 Changelog

v0.2.3+

• ✅ NEW: Audio transcription support (MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, etc.)
• ✅ NEW: OCR from images (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, WebP)
• ✅ NEW: Markdown, EPUB, RTF, EML, MSG, LaTeX support
• ✅ Separate optional dependencies for heavy features (audio/OCR)
• ✅ Performance optimizations with model caching
• ✅ Improved multilingual OCR support (Italian/English)

v0.1.24+

• ✅ Added support for bytes objects
• ✅ Added support for requests.Response objects
• ✅ Added xtxt_from_url() helper function
• ✅ Improved type hints and error handling
• ✅ Enhanced web content processing capabilities