pythonpython-3.xpdfweb-scrapingpymupdf

Can't read the content of a certain page of a pdf file available online


I've used PyMuPDF library to parse the content of any specific page of a pdf file locally and found it working. However, when I try to apply the same logic while parsing the content of any specific page of a pdf file available online, I encounter an error.

I got success using the following script (local pdf):

import fitz

path = r'C:\Users\WCS\Desktop\pymupdf\Regular Expressions Cookbook.pdf'

doc = fitz.open(path)
page1 = doc.loadPage(5)
page1text = page1.getText("text")
print(page1text)

The script below throws an error (pdf that is available online):

import fitz
import requests

URL = 'https://buildmedia.readthedocs.org/media/pdf/pdfminer-docs/latest/pdfminer-docs.pdf'

res = requests.get(URL)
doc = fitz.open(res.content)
page1 = doc.loadPage(5)
page1text = page1.getText("text")
print(page1text)

Error that the script encounters:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\WCS\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\general_demo.py", line 8, in <module>
    doc = fitz.open(res.content)
  File "C:\Users\WCS\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\fitz\fitz.py", line 2010, in __init__
    _fitz.Document_swiginit(self, _fitz.new_Document(filename, stream, filetype, rect, width, height, fontsize))
RuntimeError: cannot open b'%PDF-1.5\n%\xd0\xd4\xc5\xd8\n1 0 obj\n<<\n/Length 843       \n/Filter /FlateDecode\n>>\nstream\nx\xdamUMo\xe20\x10\xbd\xe7Wx\x0f\x95\xda\x03\xc5N\xc8W\x85\x90\x9c\x84H\x1c\xb6\xad\nZ\xed\x95&\xa6\x8bT\x12\x14\xe0\xd0\x7f\xbf~3\x13\xda\xae\xf

How can I read the content directly from online?


Solution

  • Looks like you need to initialize the object with stream:

    >>> # from memory
    >>> doc = fitz.open(stream=mem_area, filetype="pdf")
    

    mem_area has the data of the document.

    https://pymupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/document.html#Document