Is it possible to use regular expressions with pdfquery?

Question

Is it possible to use regular expression to detect text in pdf (using pdfquery or another tool)?

I know that we can do this:

pdf = pdfquery.PDFQuery("tests/samples/IRS_1040A.pdf") pdf.load() label = pdf.pq('LTTextLineHorizontal:contains("Cash")') left_corner = float(label.attr('x0')) bottom_corner = float(label.attr('y0')) cash = pdf.pq('LTTextLineHorizontal:in_bbox("%s, %s, %s, %s")' % \ (left_corner, bottom_corner-30, \ left_corner+150, bottom_corner)).text() print cash '179,000.00' 

But we need something like this:

 pdf = pdfquery.PDFQuery("tests/samples/IRS_1040A.pdf") pdf.load() label = pdf.pq('LTTextLineHorizontal:regex("\d{1,3}(?:,\d{3})*(?:\.\d{2})?")') cash = str(label.attr('x0')) print cash '179,000.00' 

Answer 1

This is not exactly a regex search, but it works to format / filter possible selections:

 def regex_function(pattern, match): re_obj = re.search(pattern, match) if re_obj != None and len(re_obj.groups()) > 0: return re_obj.group(1) return None pdf = pdfquery.PDFQuery("tests/samples/IRS_1040A.pdf") pattern = '' pdf.extract( [ ('with_parent','LTPage[pageid=1]'), ('with_formatter', 'text'), ('year', 'LTTextLineHorizontal:contains("Form 1040A (")', lambda match: regex_function(SOME_PATTERN_HERE, match))) ]) 

I have not tested this following, but it may also work:

 def some_regex_function_feature(): # here you could use some regex. return float(this.get('width',0)) * float(this.get('height',0)) > 40000 pdf.pq('LTPage[page_index="1"] *').filter(regex_function_filter_here) [<LTTextBoxHorizontal>, <LTRect>, <LTRect>]