PDF Match

Convert images to PDFs with Tesseract, extract PDF text with pdftotext and execute commands depending on the content. The purpose is to scan paperwork, generate a PDF with text overlay and apply a set of rules to rename and move the PDF.

Usage

The pdfmatch command is used like this:

pdfmatch [options] source.{pdf,jpeg,tif,...} [target.pdf]

  Options:
    --config  Use the given config file
    --delete  Remove source file if match was found and command executed
     --debug  Don't create the PDF or execute commands, but print the text
          -l  Use the given language(s), overrides the configured "lang"

If no config file is specified, pdfmatch will look for a file named pdfmatch.json in the current directory.

If the source file is a PDF, the text is extracted with pdftotext and the configured rules are applied.

If the source file is not a PDF, it is expected to be an image and is converted to a PDF with searchable text using tesseract. If no target file is given, the base name of the image is used for the PDF. In a second step, the text is extracted with pdftotext and the configured rules are applied.

The configuration file can specify the language(s) to use with tesseract and a set of rules to apply. After the first match, the associated command is executed and processing is stopped. If no match was found the no-match command is executed.

Here is an example:

{
  "rules": [{
    "matches": [{
      "invoiceDate": "Invoive Date: ${DATE}"
    }, {
      "invoiceDate": "Ausstellungsdatum: ${DATE}"
    }],
    "command": "mv ${file} ${invoiceDate.format('YYYY-MM-DD')}\\ invoice.pdf"
  }],
  "no-match": "mv ${file} ${now.format('YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss')}.pdf"
}

The configuration properties are:

• lang: The language(s) to pass to Tesseract
• rules: An array of rules to run, where each rule is an object with these properties:
  • match: A single match object or an array of match objects, passed to text-match
  • command: The command to execute, after substituting any JavaScript expressions
• no-match: A default command to execute if no matching rule was found

The command can contain variables in the form ${...} where ... is a JavaScript expression with access to the matched properties. After successful substitution, the command is written to the console and executed using child_process.execSync(command).

These special properties can be accessed in commands:

• file: The PDF file
• now: The current date as a moment object

Install

Installing Tesseract with brew:

$ brew install tesseract --with-all-languages

Installing pdftotext (or download from http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html):

$ brew install Caskroom/cask/pdftotext

Installing this tool:

$ npm install pdfmatch -g

Example setup

My working setup is a ~/Documents/Scans folder containing only my pdfmatch.json configuration. The commands in the rules move the matched files one level up:

{
  "lang": "deu+eng",
  "rules": [{
    "match": {
      "company": "npm, Inc",
      "invoiceDate": "${DATE}"
    },
    "command": "mv ${file} ../${invoiceDate.format('YYYY-MM-DD')}\\ npm.pdf"
  }],
  "no-match": "mv ${file} ../${now.format('YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss')}.pdf"
}

AppleScript folder action

If you're following the above example setup, there is an AppleScript folder action in ./scripts which allows you to save or drop files in a special folder and have pdfmatch invoked automatically. Follow the instructions in the header comments on how to use it.

API

This module exposes an API if required as a node module:

• processText(pdf_file, config, callback): Extract text from a PDF file and applies rules from the given configuration (see above).
• processImage(image_file, pdf_file, config, callback): Converts an image to a PDF file and then calls processText with the result.

License

MIT