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pythonpython-3.xpypdf

Getting TypeError: ord() expected string of length 1, but int found error


Code is

from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
with open('HTTP_Book.pdf','rb') as file:
    pdf=PdfFileReader(file)
    pagedd=pdf.getPage(0)
    print(pagedd.extractText())

This code raises the error shown below:

TypeError: ord() expected string of length 1, but int found

I searched on internet and found this Troubleshooting "TypeError: ord() expected string of length 1, but int found" but it doesn't help much. I am aware of what is the background of this error but not sure how is it related here?

Tried changing the pdf file and it works fine. Then what is wrong: pdf file or PyPDF2 is not able to handle it? I know this method is not much reliable as per documentation:

This works well for some PDF files, but poorly for others, depending on the generator used

How should this be handled?

Traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pdf_reader.py", line 71, in <module>
    print(pagedd.extractText())
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\pdf.py", line 2595, in ex
tractText
    content = ContentStream(content, self.pdf)
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\pdf.py", line 2673, in __
init__
    stream = BytesIO(b_(stream.getData()))
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\generic.py", line 841, in
 getData
    decoded._data = filters.decodeStreamData(self)
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\filters.py", line 350, in
 decodeStreamData
    data = LZWDecode.decode(data, stream.get("/DecodeParms"))
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\filters.py", line 255, in
 decode
    return LZWDecode.decoder(data).decode()
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\filters.py", line 228, in
 decode
    cW = self.nextCode();
  File "C:\Users\Jeet\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\site-packages\PyPDF2\filters.py", line 205, in
 nextCode
    nextbits=ord(self.data[self.bytepos])
TypeError: ord() expected string of length 1, but int found

Solution

  • I got the issue. This is just a limitation of PyPDF2. I used tika and BeautifulSoup to parse and extract the text, it worked fine. Although it needs little more work.

    from tika import parser 
    from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
    raw=parser.from_file('HTTP_Book.pdf',xmlContent=True)['content']
    data=BeautifulSoup(raw,'lxml')
    message=data.find(class_='page') # for first page
    print(message.text)