collect fillable form data from all pdf files in the input directory, and generate a "output.csv" file in the input directory

pdfform.py

"""
collect fillable form data from all pdf files in the input directory,
and generate a "output.csv" file in the input directory

Dependency: pdfminer
Install: pip install pdfminer


Usage:

python pdfform.py <input dir>

like:
python pdfform.py "C:/pdfs/"

"""
import sys, os, re
from pdfminer.pdfparser import PDFParser, PDFDocument
from pdfminer.pdftypes import resolve1

def get_fields(file_path):
	"""
	extract all field data from a pdf file
	"""

	parser = PDFParser(file_path)
	if hasattr(PDFDocument, 'set_parser'):
	# pdfminer < 20131022
                doc = PDFDocument()
		parser.set_document(doc)
		doc.set_parser(parser)
	else:
		# pdfminer >= 20131022
		doc = PDFDocument(parser)
		parser.set_document(doc)
	if hasattr(doc, 'initialize'):
		# as of pdfminer==20140328, "PDFDocument.initialize() method is
		# removed and no longer needed."
		doc.initialize()

	return resolve1(doc.catalog['AcroForm'])['Fields']


def get_record_value_string(dir_name, file_name):
	"""
	get a response form values as a string, separated by ','
	"""
	fp = open(os.path.join(dir_name, file_name), 'rb')
	fields = get_fields(fp)

	# initialize value list  with file_name
	record_values = [file_name]
	for i in fields:
		field = resolve1(i)
		name, value = field.get('T'), field.get('V')
		record_values.append(",%s" % str(value).replace(",", "_"))

	fp.close()
	# convert to string
	return ''.join(record_values)


def get_record_header_string(dir_name, file_name):
	"""
	get field headers, return as a string
	"""
	fp = open(os.path.join(dir_name, file_name), 'rb')
	fields = get_fields(fp)

	record_fields = []
	for i in fields:
		field = resolve1(i)
		name, value = field.get('T'), field.get('V')
		record_fields.append(",%s" % name)

	fp.close()
	# convert to string
	return ''.join(record_fields)


###### main program starts here ######

# get only pdf files
regx = re.compile("\\.pdf$", re.IGNORECASE)

# input directory, e.g., "C:\pdfs\"
input_dir_path = sys.argv[1]
output_path = os.path.join(input_dir_path, "output.csv")

# get all pdf files in directory
filenames = filter(regx.search, os.listdir(input_dir_path))
output_file = open(output_path, "w")

# write header to output
output_file.write("%s\n" % get_record_header_string(input_dir_path, filenames[0]))

# fill in form data from files
for f in filenames:
	output_file.write("%s\n" % get_record_value_string(input_dir_path, f))

output_file.close()