pdfnaut

Warning

pdfnaut is currently in an early stage of development and has only been tested with a small set of compliant documents. Expect bugs or issues.

pdfnaut is a Python library for parsing PDF 1.7 files.

pdfnaut provides a low-level interface for reading and writing PDF objects as defined in the PDF 1.7 specification. pdfnaut currently does not attempt to deviate from the specification. There's no guarantee that valid documents not fully conforming to the standard will be processed correctly.

Examples

The newer high-level API

from pdfnaut import PdfDocument

pdf = PdfDocument.from_filename("tests/docs/sample.pdf")
first_page = list(pdf.flattened_pages)[0]
if "Contents" in first_page:
    first_page_stream = pdf.resolve_reference(first_page["Contents"])
    print(first_page_stream.decompress())

The more mature low-level API

from pdfnaut import PdfParser

with open("tests/docs/sample.pdf", "rb") as doc:
    pdf = PdfParser(doc.read())
    pdf.parse()

    # Get the pages object from the trailer
    root = pdf.resolve_reference(pdf.trailer["Root"])
    pages = pdf.resolve_reference(root["Pages"])
    
    # Get the first page contents
    first_page = pdf.resolve_reference(pages["Kids"][0])
    first_page_stream = pdf.resolve_reference(first_page["Contents"])
    print(first_page_stream.decompress())

Coverage

The following tracks coverage of certain portions of the PDF standard.

• Compression filters: Supported -- FlateDecode, ASCII85, ASCIIHex, Crypt (decode only), and RunLength (decode only).
• Reading from encrypted PDFs: Supported (ARC4 and AES; requires a user-supplied implementation or availability of a compatible module -- pycryptodome for now)
• XRef streams: Supported
• File specifications: Not supported