I am working on a web application for an online library. I want to extract metadata from the PDF's that will be uploaded and for that I am using the nodejs library pdf.js-extract and multer-gridfs-storage for the upload. The problem is that I am receiving a PDF file (req.file
) and the function requires a path or link to the PDF file and therefore shows the error
"TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "path" argument must be one of type string, Buffer, or URL. Received type object"
I would like to know if there is a way to pass a file as a link, save the file locally temporarily or find another library that fits my needs.
This is my current code.
const PDFExtract = require('pdf.js-extract').PDFExtract;
app.post('/upload', upload.single('file'), (req, res) => {
const pdfExtract = new PDFExtract();
const options = {};
pdfExtract.extract(req.file, options, (err, data) => {
if (err){
res.status(404).send({ message: err });
}
res.status(200).send({ message: data });
});
});
(Edit for clarification) I am using multer with gridFS to upload a file to mongoose.
const multer = require('multer');
const GridFsStorage = require('multer-gridfs-storage');
// Create storage engine
const storage = new GridFsStorage({
url: mongoURI,
file: (req, file) => {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
crypto.randomBytes(16, (err, buf) => {
if (err) {
return reject(err);
}
const filename = buf.toString('hex') + path.extname(file.originalname);
const fileInfo = {
filename: filename,
bucketName: 'uploads'
};
resolve(fileInfo);
});
});
}
});
const upload = multer({ storage });
Solution inspired by Oliver Nybo
app.post('/upload', upload.single('file'), (req, res) => {
const pdfExtract = new PDFExtract();
const options = {};
var readableStream = gfs.createReadStream({ filename : req.file.filename });
var buff;
var bufferArray = [];
readableStream.on('data',function(chunk){
bufferArray.push(chunk);
});
readableStream.on('end',function(){
var buffer = Buffer.concat(bufferArray);
buff=buffer;
pdfExtract.extractBuffer(buff, options, (err, data) => {
if (err) {
res.status(404).send({ message: err });
}
res.status(200).send({ message: data });
});
})
});
According to multer's api documentation, you can use req.file.path
to get the full path of the uploaded file.
const PDFExtract = require('pdf.js-extract').PDFExtract;
app.post('/upload', upload.single('file'), (req, res) => {
const pdfExtract = new PDFExtract();
const options = {};
pdfExtract.extract(req.file.path, options, (err, data) => {
if (err){
res.status(404).send({ message: err });
}
res.status(200).send({ message: data });
});
});
Edit: I just read the multer options and there is an option called preservePath
.
preservePath
- Keep the full path of files instead of just the base name
Edit 2: I think you need to extract the file from the database with gridfs-stream, then convert it into a buffer (like in this thread), and then use PDFExtract's extractBuffer
function.