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Input PDFs (they are images)

clant

Hello all!

I am a bit stuck, I originally posted this in the designer forums but did not get many responses.

The problem I have is: We currently receive pdf documents which have been faxed to us. These are hand written order forms. We need to take these forms and run some form of handwriting OCR on them to help our data input guys out.

My idea is to write a python tool which can convert the pdf to a jpg. We can then take this jpg and upload it to either azure or google ocr then get the results back. We have tested the azure ocr and it worked great.

So far I have written the python which does the pdf to jpg and am trying and failing to make this into a tool in alteryx (At the moment I am getting a "typeError:__init__ () takes 2 positional arguments but 4 were give" but i think i can work this out).

Can someone please advise if what I am doing will actually work or if there is a better way to do this?

Thank you!

Cheers

Chris

Python

API

.yxi

Accepted answers

tlarsen7572

Very close, see attached for a corrected python file (in a txt extension, because Alteryx's forum doesn't like me attached python scripts...). All of my changes have comments preceding them, so I hope they are easy to find. In summary, the changes I made were:

When you add the summary field to the record info in ii_init, save the field instance to a property. We will use that instance later to populate the string value.
In ii_push_record, you are assigning the out_record to a string. This is invalid; out_record needs to be a recordref object.
In your if statement in ii_push_record, populate the summary field with the set_from_string function
Just after the if statement in ii_push_record, create the out_record recordref object by calling finalize_record on your record creator.

Now everything should work....at least it does on my system.

PDFtoImage_Engine.txt

All comments

tlarsen7572

This is a really cool use case!

I think what you want to do is certainly very possible, it's just a matter of the implementation details. At the moment I see 2 possible ways to get the data into the custom tool:

1. Import the PDFs as BLOBs using the Blob Input developer tool. The Python tool can then use the raw byte data to convert to jpg and send to the appropriate cloud API

2. Send the Python tool a list of filenames. For each file name, the tool can import the PDF, convert to JPG, and send it to the API

Which method you use really depends on the nature of the API and the PDF-to-JPG package you chose. Most likely, 2 will be the easiest option.

What kind of data is returned from the Azure/Google API?

I would encourage you to give it a go. If you run into any issues or errors, you can post them in this forum. There is a bit of a trick to munge your Python code into a custom tool, but there are lots of smart people here to help.

clant

Hi @tlarsen7572

So I have managed to get my python working but with a error. I have attached the yxi file, this is ugly, i made this following the beginngers guide to python tools. This is currently giving me the error below.

Error: Python Convert PDF to Jpeg (7): Traceback (most recent call last):
File "PDFtoImage_Engine.py", line 171, in ii_push_record
Boost.Python.ArgumentError: Python argument types in
OutputAnchor.push_record(OutputAnchor, str)
did not match C++ signature:
push_record(class SRC::Python::OutputAnchor {lvalue}, class boost::shared_ptr<struct SRC::Python::ConstRecordRef> record, bool no_auto_close=False)

If anyone could help with how to fix this i would appreciate it! The way this tool works is you can drop a text input tool in front of it with the file location of a pdf. This will then create in the same location a jpg.

With regards to the data from azure this comes back as json which should be ok to parse out.

Cheers

Chris

pdf2image.zip

harrymp33

I have my personal list of apps which is used to convert png file to pdf very easily , this apps are friendly with android and iOS system. Here is list of apps --- convert png to pdf apps

GalegO

Hi All,

Sorry bringing this topic to life, but, is possible to someone update the clant's PDFToImage tool (‎04-23-2019 01:54 AM) to use Python 3.8?

If not, could someone explain to me how can I do it?

Thank you!

tlarsen7572

@GalegO, the easiest way to do this is to package the tool as a YXI. Alteryx will create a venv for the tool when you run it as an installer. The attached YXI should do it.

YXI files are just ZIP files with a different file extension. To build the attached YXI, I removed the existing venv files and simplified requirements.txt to the bare minimum required. I tested on my system and everything works.

Note that you will need to download poppler and add its bin directory to your system path. The tool will not work, otherwise.

PDFtoImage.yxi

GalegO

@tlarsen7572 Thank you for replying. I got the error (attached) during the install.

Also, about the poppler. When you said bin system's directory, you mean, (1) a windows folder and edit the environment variable to point to that path, (2)Alteryx bin folder, (3)Alteryx custom tools folder or (4) something else?

Thank you again for the help!

PDF2Image_error.png

GalegO

@tlarsen7572 good news, I managed to make it work!

The install error was solved closing and opening the Alteryx. So, no error on the installer.

Related to the poppler I just did the following:

Downloaded the latest Windows package (.zip)
Extracted the package
Moved the extracted directory to the desired place on my system
Added the bin/ directory to my PATH system environment
Tested that all went well by opening cmd and making sure that I can call pdftoppm -h

I saw I need to update some code because my PDF has multiple pages, but this won't be difficult.

Thank you for the help!

tlarsen7572

I'm glad you were able to get it working! I'm not 100% sure why the yxi process sometimes errors out. But restarting Alteryx and opening the YXI from Alteryx usually does the trick for me, too.

GalegO

@tlarsen7572 I was able to change the code to output images from all the pages, but I could not understand how to do the same on the Output, is showing only the last page.

PDF_Images.png

Result Window.png

tlarsen7572

You should be able to do this by indenting the code that generates the records so that it falls under the for loop in ii_push_record. Something like this:

def ii_push_record(self, in_record: object) -> bool:
	"""
	Responsible for pushing records out
	Called when an input record is being sent to the plugin.
	:param in_record: The data for the incoming record.
	:return: False if method calling limit (record_cnt) is hit.
	"""
	# Copy the data from the incoming record into the outgoing record.
	self.record_creator.reset()
	self.record_copier.copy(self.record_creator, in_record)
										   
	if self.parent.input_field.get_as_string(in_record) is not None:
		input = self.parent.input_field.get_as_string(in_record)
		#pages = convert_from_path(Path,325)
		pages = convert_from_path(input,325)
		index = 0
		for page in pages:
			index += 1
			output = input + str(index) +'test.jpg'
			page.save(output,'JPEG')

			# DELETED ********************************************************************************************************
			#out_record = output

			# ADDED *********************************************************************************************************
			self.summary_field.set_from_string(self.record_creator, output)

			#ADDED *********************************************************************************************************
			out_record = self.record_creator.finalize_record()

			# Push the record downstream and quit if there's a downstream error.
			if not self.parent.output_anchor.push_record(out_record):
				return False
	 
	return True

GalegO

Wow, I've indented until this line:

			#ADDED *********************************************************************************************************
			out_record = self.record_creator.finalize_record()

And I was thinking if there something to do in ii_close.

Thank you again, this tool will be a life saver

PS: The code to generate the pages was igual as mine, besides the variable name to count the pages

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