Basic Text Extraction using Python

Extract text from all pages of a PDF document

Use TextAbsorber to capture all text from every page of a PDF document and write it to a text file. This approach is well suited for converting PDFs to searchable text, running content analysis, or preparing text for indexing and downstream processing.

1. Open the PDF document using Document.
2. Create a TextAbsorber instance.
3. Call document.pages.accept(text_absorber) to scan all pages.
4. Retrieve the extracted text from text_absorber.text.
5. Write the result to an output text file.

import os
import aspose.pdf as ap


def extract_text_from_all_pages(infile, outfile):
    """
    Extract all text from every page of the PDF and write to an output text file.
    Args:
        infile (str): Path to input PDF file.
        outfile (str): Path to output text file.
    """
    # Open the PDF document
    document = ap.Document(infile)
    # Create a TextAbsorber to extract text
    text_absorber = ap.text.TextAbsorber()
    # Accept the absorber for all pages
    document.pages.accept(text_absorber)
    # Get extracted text
    extracted_text = text_absorber.text
    # Write the text to an output file
    with open(outfile, "w", encoding="utf-8") as tw:
        tw.write(extracted_text)

Extract text from a particular page

Apply TextAbsorber to a single page to isolate and save text from that section of a multi-page document. This is useful when you need content from only one page — for example, an invoice, a report section, or a form summary.

1. Open the PDF document using Document.
2. Create a TextAbsorber instance.
3. Call accept on the target page: document.pages[page_number].accept(text_absorber).
4. Retrieve the extracted text and write it to a file.

import os
import aspose.pdf as ap


def extract_text_from_page(infile, outfile, page_number):
    """
    Extract text from a specific page number of the PDF.
    Args:
        infile (str): Path to input PDF file.
        outfile (str): Path to output text file.
        page_number (int): 1-based page index to extract.
    """
    document = ap.Document(infile)
    text_absorber = ap.text.TextAbsorber()
    # Accept the absorber on only the specified page
    document.pages[page_number].accept(text_absorber)
    extracted_text = text_absorber.text
    with open(outfile, "w", encoding="utf-8") as tw:
        tw.write(extracted_text)

Extract Paragraphs by iterating through them

Use ParagraphAbsorber when you need paragraph-aware extraction instead of plain page text. Unlike TextAbsorber or TextFragmentAbsorber, this API organizes output by page, section, and paragraph, which is useful for text analysis, structured export, and layout-sensitive processing.

1. Open the source PDF as a Document.
2. Create a ParagraphAbsorber instance.
3. Call absorber.visit(document) to analyze all pages.
4. Iterate through page_markups, then through each section and paragraph.
5. Read the text fragments from each paragraph and write the result to a file.

import aspose.pdf as ap


def extract_paragraphs_from_pdf(infile, outfile):
    """
    Extract all paragraphs from a PDF document, and write each paragraph’s text into an output file.
    Args:
        infile (str): Path to input PDF file.
        outfile (str): Path to output text file.
    """
    document = ap.Document(infile)
    try:
        absorber = ap.text.ParagraphAbsorber()
        absorber.visit(document)

        with open(outfile, "w", encoding="utf-8") as tw:
            for page_markup in absorber.page_markups:
                for sec_idx, section in enumerate(page_markup.sections, start=1):
                    for para_idx, paragraph in enumerate(section.paragraphs, start=1):
                        # Concatenate all fragments/lines in the paragraph
                        parts = []
                        for line in paragraph.lines:
                            for fragment in line:
                                parts.append(fragment.text)
                            parts.append("\r\n")
                        paragraph_text = "".join(parts)
                        tw.write(
                            f"Page {page_markup.number}, Section {sec_idx}, Paragraph {para_idx}:\n"
                        )
                        tw.write(paragraph_text + "\n")
    finally:
        document.close()