python - Parse annotations from a pdf

Question

I want a python function that takes a pdf and returns a list of the text of the note annotations in the document. I have looked at python-poppler (https://code.launchpad.net/~poppler-python/poppler-python/trunk) but I can not figure out how to get it to give me anything useful.

I found the get_annot_mapping method and modified the demo program provided to call it via self.current_page.get_annot_mapping(), but I have no idea what to do with an AnnotMapping object. It seems to not be fully implemented, providing only the copy method.

If there are any other libraries that provide this function, that's fine as well.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1106098/parse-annotations-from-a-pdf

Answer 1

Just in case somebody is looking for some working code. Here is a script I use.

import poppler
import sys
import urllib
import os

def main():
  input_filename = sys.argv[1]
    # http://blog.hartwork.org/?p=612
  document = poppler.document_new_from_file('file://%s' % 
    urllib.pathname2url(os.path.abspath(input_filename)), None)
  n_pages = document.get_n_pages()
  all_annots = 0

  for i in range(n_pages):
        page = document.get_page(i)
        annot_mappings = page.get_annot_mapping ()
        num_annots = len(annot_mappings)
        if num_annots > 0:
            for annot_mapping in annot_mappings:
                if  annot_mapping.annot.get_annot_type().value_name != 'POPPLER_ANNOT_LINK':
                    all_annots += 1
                    print('page: {0:3}, {1:10}, type: {2:10}, content: {3}'.format(i+1, annot_mapping.annot.get_modified(), annot_mapping.annot.get_annot_type().value_nick, annot_mapping.annot.get_contents()))
    
  if all_annots > 0:
    print(str(all_annots) + " annotation(s) found")
  else:
    print("no annotations found")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()