PDF to Text in Ruby

This page describes how to use the Pdfcrowd online API to convert PDF to text in Ruby. The API is user-friendly and can be integrated into your application with just a few lines of code.

gem install pdfcrowd

Quick Start

Here are Ruby examples for quickly getting started with the API. See more examples.

require "pdfcrowd"

begin
    # create the API client instance
    client = Pdfcrowd::PdfToTextClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d")

    # run the conversion and write the result to a file
    client.convertFileToFile("/path/to/invoice.pdf", "invoice.txt")

rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}"
    raise
end

require "pdfcrowd"

begin
    # create the API client instance
    client = Pdfcrowd::PdfToTextClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d")

    # run the conversion and write the result to a file
    client.convertUrlToFile("https://pdfcrowd.com/static/pdf/apisamples/invoice.pdf", "invoice.txt")

rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}"
    raise
end

require "pdfcrowd"

begin
    # create the API client instance
    client = Pdfcrowd::PdfToTextClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d")

    # run the conversion and write the result to a file
    client.convertRawDataToFile(open('/path/to/hello_world.pdf', 'rb').read(), "invoice.txt")

rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}"
    raise
end

Authentication

The credentials to access the API are your Pdfcrowd username and the API key. You can try out the API without registering using the following demo credentials:

• Username: demo
• API key: ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d

To get your personal API credentials, you can start a free API trial or buy the API license.

Error Handling

It is recommended that you implement error handling to catch errors that the API may return, see the example code below. A list of status codes and their description can be found here.

begin 
    # call the API 
rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why 
    # print the error
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}"

    # print the error code
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error Code: #{why.getCode()}"

    # print the error message
    STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error Message: #{why.getMessage()}"
end

Troubleshooting

• Refer to the API Status Codes page if the API returns an error.
• You can use setDebugLog and getDebugLogUrl to get detailed info about the conversion, such as load errors, load times, browser console output, etc.
• Check the FAQ.
• Contact us if you need help or are missing a feature.

API Method Reference

Refer to the PDF to Text Ruby Reference for a description of all API methods.