unpdf

Python bindings for unpdf - High-performance PDF content extraction to Markdown, text, and JSON.

Installation

pip install unpdf-markdown

The distribution is unpdf-markdown; the import name is unpdf.

Quick Start

import unpdf

# Convert PDF to Markdown
markdown = unpdf.to_markdown("document.pdf")
print(markdown)

# Convert PDF to plain text
text = unpdf.to_text("document.pdf")
print(text)

# Convert PDF to JSON
json_data = unpdf.to_json("document.pdf", pretty=True)
print(json_data)

# Get document information
info = unpdf.get_info("document.pdf")
print(info)

# Get page count
pages = unpdf.get_page_count("document.pdf")
print(f"Total pages: {pages}")

# Check if file is a valid PDF
is_valid = unpdf.is_pdf("document.pdf")
print(f"Is valid PDF: {is_valid}")

Input: path or bytes

Every function takes its PDF as PdfSource — a path (str, or any os.PathLike such as pathlib.Path) or the PDF's own bytes. Types are unambiguous: str is always a path, bytes is always content, and bytes go through the native in-memory parser rather than a temporary file.

from pathlib import Path
import unpdf

unpdf.to_markdown("document.pdf")
unpdf.to_markdown(Path("document.pdf"))
unpdf.to_markdown(pdf_bytes)

API Reference

to_markdown(source: PdfSource, flags: int = 0) -> str

Convert a PDF file to Markdown format.

to_text(source: PdfSource) -> str

Convert a PDF file to plain text.

to_json(source: PdfSource, pretty: bool = False) -> str

Convert a PDF file to JSON format.

get_info(source: PdfSource) -> dict

Get document metadata. Keys: section_count (the page count), resource_count, plus title / author only when the document sets them.

get_page_count(source: PdfSource) -> int

Get the number of pages in a PDF file.

is_pdf(source: PdfSource) -> bool

Check if a file is a valid PDF.

version() -> str

Get the version of the native library.

get_extraction_quality(source: PdfSource) -> dict

Document-level extraction diagnostics: char_count, word_count, replacement_char_count, encrypted, is_scan_pdf, suppressed_ocr_pages, pages_incomplete, declared_page_count, unresolved_page_nodes, skipped_object_count. See "Incomplete extraction" below.

get_page_stats(source: PdfSource, page_number: int) -> dict

Per-page content-stream operator counts (1-indexed): page, text_op_count, image_op_count, ocr_text_suppressed.

Detecting scanned (image-only) PDFs

Empty output can mean a scanned document, a genuinely blank page, or a parse failure. The introspection surface tells them apart:

import unpdf

if unpdf.get_extraction_quality("scan.pdf")["is_scan_pdf"]:
    print("Scanned document - OCR required")

stats = unpdf.get_page_stats("scan.pdf", 1)
if stats["text_op_count"] == 0 and stats["image_op_count"] > 0:
    print("Page 1 is image-only (scanned)")
elif stats["text_op_count"] == 0:
    print("Page 1 is genuinely blank")

Note: a searchable scan (page image plus an invisible OCR text layer) reports text_op_count > 0 — combine the check with ocr_text_suppressed, which flags pages whose unreadable OCR layer was dropped.

Incomplete extraction

A damaged PDF does not always fail. When the cross-reference table survives but the objects it points at do not, the parser returns the pages it could read — a success over an incomplete page set. Check before indexing or archiving, because a page that silently never arrived is indistinguishable from a page that never existed:

quality = unpdf.get_extraction_quality("document.pdf")
if quality["pages_incomplete"]:
    print(f"incomplete - document declares {quality['declared_page_count']} page(s)")

Also note that get_info()["resource_count"] counts the extracted-resource inventory, which this binding's parse path leaves empty (resource extraction is off by default to bound peak memory) — it is not a count of images on the page. Use get_page_stats for scan detection.

Handling failures

UnpdfError carries a kind so you can branch on the reason a call failed instead of matching on message text:

from unpdf import to_text, ErrorKind, UnpdfError

try:
    text = to_text("document.pdf")
except UnpdfError as e:
    if e.kind == ErrorKind.ENCRYPTED:
        print("Password required")
    elif e.kind in (ErrorKind.CORRUPTED, ErrorKind.PDF_PARSE):
        print("The file is damaged")
    else:
        print(f"Extraction failed ({e.kind.name}): {e}")

UnpdfError subclasses RuntimeError, so existing except RuntimeError handlers keep working. ErrorKind values are part of the native ABI: new reasons take new numbers and existing ones are never renumbered, so treat an unrecognised value as a generic failure.

License

MIT License