ottosmops/pdftotext

Extract text from PDF

2.0.1 2025-08-31 14:22 UTC

Requires

• php: >= 7.2
• symfony/process: >=4.2

Requires (Dev)

• phpunit/phpunit: >=10

MIT

• ak

• laravel
• pdftotext
• anton
• ottosmops

README

This package provides a class to extract text from a pdf.

\Ottosmops\Pdftotext\Extract::getText('/path/to/file.pdf') //returns the text from the pdf

Requirements

The Package uses pdftotext. Make sure that this is installed: which pdftotext

For Installation see: poppler-utils

If the installed binary is not found ("The command "which pdftotext" failed.") you can pass the full path to the _constructor (see below) or use putenv('PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/:/usr/bin') (with the dir where pdftotext lives) before you call the class Extract.

Installation

composer require ottosmops/pdftotext

Usage

Extracting text from a pdf:

$text = (new Extract())
  ->pdf('file.pdf')
  ->text();

Security note: If you pass user input as options or filenames to the library, make sure to validate or escape them to avoid shell injection. The library uses symfony/process, which provides basic protection, but unsafe options could still cause issues.

You can set the binary and you can specify options:

$text = (new Extract('/path/to/pdftotext'))
  ->pdf('path/to/file.pdf')
  ->options('-layout')
  ->text();

Default options are: -eol unix -enc UTF-8 -raw

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.