Next.js PDF Parser Template 📄🔍

nextjs-pdf-parser.mp4

Introduction

I was having some trouble parsing PDFs in Next.js, so I thought I would make this template for anyone else who was facing the same issues as me. I hope this template saves you some time and trouble. It's a basic create-next-app with PDF parsing implemented using the pdf2json library and file uploading facilitated by FilePond.

Installation & Setup 🚀

1. Clone the repository:

2. git clone [repository-url]

3. Navigate to the project directory:

4. cd nextjs-pdf-parser

5. Install dependencies:

6. Windows only: In app\api\upload\route.ts on line 22, change tempFilePath to a valid path. Make sure it starts from the root drive, for example: C:/coding/nextjs-pdf-parser/public/${fileName}.pdf

7. npm install
   # or
   yarn install

8. Run the development server:

   npm run dev
   # or
   yarn dev

   Visit http://localhost:3000 to view the application.

Usage 🖱

Navigate to http://localhost:3000 and use the FilePond uploader to select and upload a PDF. Once uploaded, the content of the PDF is parsed and printed to the server console (Note: it will not be printed to the browser log).

Technical Details 🛠

• nodeUtil is not defined Error:

  To bypass the nodeUtil is not defined error, the following configuration was added to next.config.js:

const nextConfig = {
  experimental: {
    serverComponentsExternalPackages: ['pdf2json'],
  },
};

module.exports = nextConfig;

See more details here

• Blank output from pdfParser.getRawTextContent():

  This issue might be due to incorrect type definitions. There are two potential solutions:

  1. Fix TypeScript definitions: Update the type definition for PDFParser.

  2. Bypass type checking: Instantiate PDFParser as shown:

     const pdfParser = new (PDFParser as any)(null, 1);

  For more details, refer to my comment on this GitHub issue.

Acknowledgements 🙏

A special thanks to the following libraries and their contributors:

• FilePond: For providing a seamless and user-friendly file uploading experience.
• pdf2json: For its efficient and robust PDF parsing capabilities.

License 📜

MIT License