# Pdf reader

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-reader/70520>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 17, 2005, 3:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-reader/70520 "2005-12-17T03:20:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2005, 3:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-reader/70520/1 "2005-12-17T03:20:16Z")

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Hi All,  
anyone knows of a pdf reader lib? if not ruby, maybe something in  
perl/python… (we’d like to read some pdf fields)  
advance thanks for the info  
-botp

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2005, 5:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-reader/70520/2 "2005-12-17T05:56:31Z")

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2005/12/16, Peña, Botp [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> Hi All,  
> anyone knows of a pdf reader lib? if not ruby, maybe something in perl/python… (we’d like to read some pdf fields)  
> advance thanks for the info  
> -botp

Google is your friend:

[http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-pdf/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-pdf/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/SSSiso-8859-1SQSPeS)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2005, 12:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-reader/70520/3 "2005-12-18T12:48:35Z")

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> > anyone knows of a pdf reader lib?

> [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-pdf/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-pdf/)

AFAIK, pdf-writer doesn’t currently support _reading_ PDFs, though it’s  
a planned feature:

[http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/152073](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/152073)

I’ve used pdftotext (part of the xpdf tools) to extract content from  
PDFs into ruby. But as the name suggests, it only helps with extracting  
text.

[http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/](http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/)

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