PDFExcavator

A powerful PDF extraction library for Node.js built on Mozilla's pdf.js.

The JavaScript/TypeScript alternative to Python's pdfplumber - extract text, tables, graphics, and visual elements from PDF files with precision.

If you're coming from Python and looking for pdfplumber-like functionality in Node.js, PDFExcavator is your drop-in solution with similar APIs and capabilities.

Features

• Text Extraction - Character, word, line, and paragraph level with positions, fonts, colors
• Table Extraction - Bordered and borderless tables with confidence scoring
• Graphics Extraction - Lines, rectangles, curves, images, annotations
• OCR Support - Tesseract.js integration for scanned documents
• Layout Analysis - LAParams for precise text grouping
• Multi-Column - Column detection and reading order
• CJK Support - Chinese, Japanese, Korean text
• Font Handling - Automatic substitution for PDF base fonts
• CLI Tool - Command-line extraction
• TypeScript - Full type definitions

PDFExcavator vs pdfplumber

| Feature | PDFExcavator (Node.js) | pdfplumber (Python) | |---------|------------------------|---------------------| | Text Extraction | ✅ Full support | ✅ Full support | | Table Extraction | ✅ With confidence scoring | ✅ Basic | | Borderless Tables | ✅ Projection profile analysis | ✅ Basic | | Nested Tables | ✅ Supported | ❌ Not supported | | Character-level Data | ✅ With colors, fonts | ✅ Basic | | Word Extraction | ✅ Configurable tolerance | ✅ Basic | | Graphics (lines/rects/curves) | ✅ Full support | ✅ Full support | | Image Extraction | ✅ Metadata + render | ✅ Basic | | Annotations | ✅ Full support | ✅ Basic | | OCR Integration | ✅ Tesseract.js | ⚠️ External only | | Layout Analysis (LAParams) | ✅ Full pdfminer-style | ✅ Full support | | Multi-Column Detection | ✅ Auto-detect & extract | ❌ Manual | | CJK Text Support | ✅ Full CMap support | ✅ Full support | | Font Substitution | ✅ Auto for 14 base fonts | ❌ Not available | | Precision Mode | ✅ Full state tracking | ❌ Not available | | Visual Debugging | ✅ Render + draw annotations | ✅ Similar | | PDF Repair | ✅ Built-in | ❌ Not available | | CLI Tool | ✅ Built-in | ❌ Not built-in | | TypeScript Types | ✅ Full definitions | N/A (Python) | | Async/Streaming | ✅ Native async | ⚠️ Synchronous | | Large PDF Handling | ✅ Concurrent processing | ⚠️ Sequential |

Why Choose PDFExcavator?

• Node.js/TypeScript native - No Python dependency, seamless JavaScript integration
• Modern async API - Non-blocking operations, concurrent page processing
• Enhanced table detection - Confidence scoring, nested tables, borderless detection
• Built-in CLI - Quick extraction without writing code
• Active maintenance - Built on Mozilla's pdf.js

Installation

npm install pdfexcavator

Optional Dependencies

# For rendering pages to images
npm install canvas

# For OCR support (scanned documents)
npm install tesseract.js

Quick Start

import pdfexcavator from 'pdfexcavator';

// Open a PDF
const pdf = await pdfexcavator.open('document.pdf');

// Get metadata
const metadata = await pdf.metadata;
console.log(`Title: ${metadata.title}`);
console.log(`Pages: ${metadata.pageCount}`);

// Extract text from each page
for (const page of pdf.pages) {
  const text = await page.extractText();
  console.log(text);
}

// Extract tables
for (const page of pdf.pages) {
  const tables = await page.extractTables();
  for (const table of tables) {
    console.log(table.rows);
  }
}

// Close when done
await pdf.close();

CLI

# Install globally
npm install -g pdfexcavator

# Extract text
pdfexcavator text document.pdf

# Extract tables
pdfexcavator tables document.pdf

# Get help
pdfexcavator --help

Documentation

For detailed API reference and guides, see the Documentation:

• Getting Started
• API Reference
• Text Extraction
• Table Extraction
• OCR Integration
• Guides & Examples
• Advanced Topics

Security

PDFExcavator includes built-in security features to protect against common vulnerabilities:

Path Traversal Protection

When processing user-provided file paths, use the basePath option to restrict file access:

// Restrict file operations to a specific directory
const pdf = await pdfexcavator.open(userProvidedPath, {
  basePath: '/safe/uploads/directory'
});

// Also available for image saving
const image = await page.toImage();
await image.save(userProvidedPath, {
  basePath: '/safe/output/directory'
});

Safe Text Search

The search() method treats string patterns as literal text by default, preventing ReDoS attacks:

// Safe - pattern is escaped automatically
const results = await page.search(userInput);

// If you need regex, pass a RegExp object (use with caution on user input)
const results = await page.search(/pattern/gi);

// Or explicitly enable regex mode
const results = await page.search(userInput, { literal: false });

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18.0.0

License

MIT