pdf-calendar-parsing

PDF Calendar Parsing Skill

Overview

This skill covers extracting calendar events and time blocks from PDF calendar documents using pdfplumber, a Python library for extracting text and tables from PDF files.

Installation

pip install pdfplumber

Key Concepts

How pdfplumber Works

• Opens PDF files and extracts text with position information
• Can identify text bounding boxes (x0, y0, x1, y1 coordinates)
• Supports extracting tables and structured data

Calendar Grid Extraction

For a calendar with hourly/time-based layout:

1. Extract all text from the PDF with position data
2. Identify time labels (hours on the left axis)
3. Identify event blocks by text content and bounding boxes
4. Calculate event duration by comparing Y-coordinates

Code Examples

Basic PDF Opening

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open('/root/calendar.pdf') as pdf:
    page = pdf.pages[0]
    text = page.extract_text()
    print(text)

Extracting Text with Positions

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open('/root/calendar.pdf') as pdf:
    page = pdf.pages[0]

    # Get all text objects with their positions
    for char in page.chars:
        print(f"Text: {char['text']}, X: {char['x0']}, Y: {char['y0']}")

Identifying Calendar Events

import pdfplumber

def extract_calendar_events(pdf_path):
    with pdfplumber.open(pdf_path) as pdf:
        page = pdf.pages[0]

        # Get all text with positions
        text_data = page.extract_text_with_layout()

        # Extract words and their bounding boxes
        words = page.extract_words()

        events = []
        for word in words:
            # word contains: 'text', 'x0', 'y0', 'x1', 'y1', 'size', 'font'
            if word['text'] not in ['12am', '1am', '2am']:  # Skip time labels
                events.append({
                    'text': word['text'],
                    'x0': word['x0'],
                    'y0': word['y0'],
                    'x1': word['x1'],
                    'y1': word['y1']
                })

        return events