node-poppler

Asynchronous node.js wrapper for the Poppler PDF rendering library

Intro

Poppler is a PDF rendering library that also includes a collection of utility binaries, which allows for the manipulation and extraction of data from PDF documents such as converting PDF files to HTML, TXT, or PostScript.

The node-poppler module provides an asynchronous node.js wrapper around said utility binaries for easier use. It was created out of a need for a PDF-to-HTML conversion module at Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to convert clinical documents.

Installation

Install using npm:

npm i node-poppler

Linux and macOS/Darwin Support

Windows binaries are provided with this repository. For Linux users, you will need to download the poppler-data and poppler-utils binaries separately.

An example of downloading the binaries on a Debian system:

sudo apt-get install poppler-data
sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

For macOS users, you can download the latest versions with Homebrew:

brew install poppler

Once they have been installed, you will need to pass the poppler-utils installation directory as a parameter to an instance of the Poppler class:

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");
const poppler = new Poppler("/usr/bin");

API

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

API Documentation can be found here

Examples

poppler.pdfToCairo

Example of an async await call to poppler.pdfToCairo(), to convert only the first and second page of a PDF file to PNG:

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = "test_document.pdf";
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	firstPageToConvert: 1,
	lastPageToConvert: 2,
	pngFile: true,
};
const outputFile = `test_document.png`;

const res = await poppler.pdfToCairo(file, outputFile, options);
console.log(res);

Example of an async await call to poppler.pdfToCairo(), to convert only the first of a PDF file to a new PDF file using stdout:

const fs = require("fs");
const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = "test_document.pdf";
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	lastPageToConvert: 1,
	pdfFile: true,
};

const res = await poppler.pdfToCairo(file, undefined, options);
// pdfToCairo writes to stdout using binary encoding if pdfFile or singleFile options are used
await fs.writeFile("new_file.pdf", res, { encoding: "binary" });

poppler.pdfToHtml

Example of calling poppler.pdfToHtml() with a promise chain:

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = "test_document.pdf";
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	firstPageToConvert: 1,
	lastPageToConvert: 2,
};

poppler.pdfToHtml(file, undefined, options).then((res) => {
	console.log(res);
});

Example of calling poppler.pdfToHtml() with a promise chain, providing a Buffer as an input:

const fs = require("fs");
const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = fs.readFileSync("test_document.pdf");
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	firstPageToConvert: 1,
	lastPageToConvert: 2,
};

poppler.pdfToHtml(file, "tester.html", options).then((res) => {
	console.log(res);
});

poppler.pdfToText

Example of calling poppler.pdfToText() with a promise chain:

const { Poppler } = require("node-poppler");

const file = "test_document.pdf";
const poppler = new Poppler();
const options = {
	firstPageToConvert: 1,
	lastPageToConvert: 2,
};

poppler.pdfToText(file, options).then((res) => {
	console.log(res);
});

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and any help is greatly appreciated!

See the contributing guide for details on how to get started. Please adhere to this project's Code of Conduct when contributing.

Acknowledgements

• Albert Astals Cid - Poppler developer
• Filipe Fernandes - poppler-feedstock maintainer
• Peter Williams - poppler-feedstock maintainer
• Owen Schwartz - poppler-windows developer
• Uwe Korn - poppler-feedstock maintainer
• Xylar Asay-Davis - poppler-feedstock maintainer

License

node-poppler is licensed under the MIT license.