office-text-extractor

yet another library to extract text from docx, pptx, xlsx, and pdf files.

similar libraries

there are other great libraries that do the same job and have inspired this project, such as:

• any-text
• officeparser
• textract

however, office-text-extractor has the following differences:

• parses file based on its mime type, not its file extension.
• does not spawn a child process to use a tool installed on the device.
• reads and returns text from the file if it contains plain text.

libraries used

this package uses some amazing existing libraries that perform better than the ones that originally existed in this module, and are therefore used instead:

• pdf-parse, for parsing pdf files
• xlsx, for parsing xlsx files
• mammoth, for parsing docx files

a big thank you to the contributors of these projects!

installation

node

from version 2.0.0 onwards, this package is pure esm. please read this article for a guide on how to ensure your project can import this library.

to use this package in an node project, install it using a package manager such as npm/pnpm/bun:

> npm install office-text-extractor
> pnpm add office-text-extractor
> bun add office-text-extractor

browser

the library currently cannot be used in the browser due to my inability to figure out how to properly bundle the library with its dependencies. pull requests are welcome and appreciated!

usage

an example of using the library to extract text is as follows:

import { readFile } from 'node:fs/promises'
import { getTextExtractor } from 'office-text-extractor'

// this function returns a new instance of the `TextExtractor` class, with the default
// extraction methods (docx, pptx, xlsx, pdf) registered.
const extractor = getTextExtractor()

// extract text from a url, because that's a neat first example :p
const url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gamemaker1/office-text-extractor/rewrite/test/fixtures/pptx.pptx'
const text = await extractor.extractText({ input: url, type: 'url' })

// you can extract text from a file too, like so:
const path = 'stuff/boring.pdf'
const text = await extractor.extractText({ input: path, type: 'file' })

// if you have a buffer (Uint8Array) with the file in it, you can pass that too:
const buffer = await readFile(path)
const text = await extractor.extractText({ input: buffer, type: 'buffer' })

console.log(text)

the following is an example of how to create and use your own text extraction method:

import { TextExtractor, type TextExtractionMethod } from 'office-text-extractor'

/**
 * Extracts text from images.
 */
class ImageExtractor implements TextExtractionMethod {
  /**
   * The mime types of the file that the extractor accepts.
   */
  mimes = ['image/png', 'image/jpeg']

  /**
   * Extracts text from the image file passed by the user.
   */
  apply = async (input: Uint8Array): Promise<string> {
    const text = await processImage(input)
    return text
  }
}

// create a new extractor and register our extraction method.
const extractor = new TextExtractor()
extractor.addMethod(new ImageExtractor())

// then use it like you would normally.
const text = await extractor.extractText(...)
console.log(text)

license

this project is licensed under the ISC license. please see license.md for more details.