pyxtxt 0.2.4

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/video transcription, OCR from images, and more.

NEW in v0.2.4: Added video transcription support! Now supports both audio and video files using Whisper.

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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 & Video transcription: MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, MKV 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 & Video Transcription (NEW)

from pyxtxt import xtxt

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

# Transcribe video files (extracts audio)
text = xtxt("presentation.mp4")
text = xtxt("conference_video.mov")
text = xtxt("webinar.avi")

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

video_response = requests.get("https://example.com/video.mp4")
text = xtxt(video_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)

# Video transcription from API
video_response = requests.get("https://api.example.com/meeting.mp4")
transcript = xtxt(video_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

v0.2.4

• ✅ NEW: Video transcription support (MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, MKV)
• ✅ ENHANCED: Audio transcription now supports video files
• ✅ Whisper automatically extracts audio track from videos
• ✅ Unified interface for both audio and video processing

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