Determine if a given search-text is in one or a number of pdf's that is given within a given search path
For accessing the text of the pdf's the pdfminer-package is needed, that must be installed beforehand.
Furthermore, pdf_search depends on pathlib and re that are both given in the Standard-Library of Python 3.
From the console two ways of using the script are possible.
- by passing arguments to the function within the console
- passing no arguments to the module within the console
Passing this file to the console with arguments as follows searches the
pdfs in the given directory path\\to\\directory for the given search-text:
>>> python pdf_search.py 'search-text' 'path\\to\\directory'
Passing this file without arguments to the console starts a file-dialog as follows::
> python pdf_search.py
Please insert text to search for in pdfs: 'search-text'
Please insert the directory to search in (Default: current directory): 'path\\to\\directory'
from pdf_search import check_pdfs
check_pdfs(search_text='search-text', directory='path\\to\\directory')Imagine you have a number of papers, e.g. from a conference. And you want to filter those papers writen by a specific author, but the naming of the pdfs gives no evidence who has written the paper.
Now, you could open every paper and look for the specific name until you find the desired one.
This is a tedious task and by the way very time-consuming and boooooooring.
Here, pdf_search comes into play and will do that task for you while you may - for example - drink a cup of coffee.