What it does
pdfplumber inspects PDF text characters, lines, rectangles, images, and other page objects. It includes table extraction, visual debugging, and a command-line route to CSV, JSON, or plain text.
Export CSV or JSON when character coordinates and page objects matter, or plain text when the goal is readable content. CLI page ranges are one-based; Python can crop a table region and choose line, text-alignment or explicit-boundary detection. extract_tables returns nested table, row and cell values, while extract_table selects the largest table. The MIT-licensed library includes a local Python API and visual debugging. It does not perform OCR, create or edit PDFs, and explicitly has limited support for tables recovered through OCR.
Strengths
- Exposes detailed page objects and selective command-line exports.
Watch out for
- No OCR, PDF generation or editing; table extraction works best on machine-generated PDFs and has limited support for OCR-derived tables.
Best for
- Inspecting and extracting structured information from PDF pages