How to rename PDF file, with texts extracted from the PDF file?

Question

I am trying to use Python to rename PDF file using part of the file content. Here is the situation.

The PDF file is a commercial invoice, contains wordings "Commercial Invoice" and "Department". I want to rename the file to "Commercial Invoice" and " Department ", such as "353624 HR".

Here is what I have so far:

from StringIO import StringIO
import pyPdf
import os

# a function here
def getPDFContent(path):
    content = ""
    num_pages = 10
    p = file(path, "rb")
    pdf = pyPdf.PdfFileReader(p)
    for i in range(0, num_pages):
        content += pdf.getPage(i).extractText() + "\n"
        content = " ".join(content.replace(u"\xa0", " ").strip().split())     
        return content 

# name of the source PDF file
PDF_name = '222'

# picking texts from the PDF file
pdfContent = StringIO(getPDFContent("C:\\" + PDF_name + ".pdf").encode("ascii", "ignore"))
for line in pdfContent:
    aaa = line.find(' Commercial Invoice ')
    CIN = line[aaa + 28: aaa + 38]
    bbb = line.find('Department')
    Dpt = line [bbb+20 : bbb+26]

    final_name = str(CIN + " " + Dpt)
    
print final_name

f = open("C:\\" + PDF_name + ".pdf")
f.close()

os.rename("C:\\" + PDF_name + ".pdf", "C:\\" + final_name + ".pdf")

it works until print out the text extracted ' print final_name', but at the last part when renaming the file, it gives an error " WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process".

What went wrong here? it seems the file was once not closed properly?

Answer 1

in def getPDFContent(path), after p = file(path, "rb"), when the content has been copied, you need to close the file.

p.close()

put this just after the for loop but in the function.