PDF Table Extractor

A Ruby gem for extracting tables from PDF files by analyzing text spacing and positions. It parses PDF pages, removes headers/footers and pagination if configured, splits lines into cells based on multiple-space runs, and merges rows into table-like structures.

• Source: https://github.com/jomb-ch/pdf_table_extractor
• License: MIT

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'pdf_table_extractor'

Then install:

bundle install

Or install it yourself:

gem install pdf_table_extractor

require 'pdf_table_extractor'

# Initialize with a PDF file path
extractor = PdfTableExtractor.new('path/to/file.pdf')

# Extract tables
extractor.extract_tables

# Get results: array of rows, each row is an array of cells
rows = extractor.result
# rows => [[{ text: 'Cell 1', position: 0 }, { text: 'Cell 2', position: 20 }], ...]

extractor = PdfTableExtractor.new('path/to/file.pdf', options: {
  remove_page_headers: true,          # Remove common leading lines across pages (default: true)
  remove_page_footers: true,          # Remove common trailing lines across pages (default: true)
  remove_pagination_from_header: false, # true or Integer (line number from top) to remove pagination; if true, tests first 5 lines (default: false)
  remove_pagination_from_footer: false, # true or Integer (line number from bottom) to remove pagination; if true, tests last 5 lines (default: false)
  remove_empty_lines: true,           # Filter out empty lines (default: true)
  position_tolerance: 2               # Tolerance for matching column positions, allowing indentation within columns (default: 2)
})

extractor.extract_tables
rows = extractor.result

require 'pdf-reader'
require 'pdf_table_extractor'

reader = PDF::Reader.new('path/to/file.pdf')
extractor = PdfTableExtractor.new(reader: reader)
extractor.extract_tables
rows = extractor.result

The gem uses several heuristics to identify table-like structures:

• Text Positioning: splits lines into cells using multiple spaces as separators and tracks each cell's starting position
• Row Congruence: considers rows to belong to the same table if their cell positions match (or are a subset) within a given tolerance
• Header/Footer Removal: optionally removes common leading/trailing lines across pages
• Pagination Handling: optionally removes page numbers from headers/footers

• Single-row tables are joined into a single cell before further processing
• The first row of a table cannot have empty cells
• Multi-cell rows followed by rows with fewer cells (but matching positions) are considered part of the same table
• Trailing rows of multi-cell tables with content only in the first cell are treated as new single-cell tables if the content length is larger than the position of the second column minus 2

Set up the project:

bundle install

Run tests:

bundle exec rspec

Run linters:

bundle exec standardrb
bundle exec rubocop --parallel

Generate API docs (YARD):

bundle exec yard doc
open doc/index.html

Release a new version:

1. Update the version number in lib/pdf_table_extractor/version.rb
2. Build and release:

bundle exec rake release

GitHub Actions workflow runs StandardRB, RuboCop, RSpec, and generates YARD docs on pushes and pull requests. Docs are uploaded as an artifact.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/jomb-ch/pdf_table_extractor

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.