Best way to extract text from a Word doc without using COM/automation?

Question

Is there a reasonable way to extract plain text from a Word file that doesn\'t depend on COM automation? (This is a a feature for a web app deployed on a non-Windows platfo

Answer 1

Honestly don't use "pip install tika", this has been developed for mono-user (one developper working on his laptop) and not for multi-users (multi-developpers).

The small class TikaWrapper.py bellow which uses Tika in command line is widely enough to meet our needs.

You just have to instanciate this class with JAVA_HOME path and the Tika jar path, that's all ! And it works perfectly for lot of formats (e.g: PDF, DOCX, ODT, XLSX, PPT, etc.).

#!/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# Class to extract metadata and text from different file types (such as PPT, XLS, and PDF)
# Developed by Philippe ROSSIGNOL
#####################
# TikaWrapper class #
#####################
class TikaWrapper:

    java_home = None
    tikalib_path = None

    # Constructor
    def __init__(self, java_home, tikalib_path):
        self.java_home = java_home
        self.tika_lib_path = tikalib_path

    def extractMetadata(self, filePath, encoding="UTF-8", returnTuple=False):
        '''
        - Description:
          Extract metadata from a document
        
        - Params:
          filePath: The document file path
          encoding: The encoding (default = "UTF-8")
          returnTuple: If True return a tuple which contains both the output and the error (default = False)
        
        - Examples:
          metadata = extractMetadata(filePath="MyDocument.docx")
          metadata, error = extractMetadata(filePath="MyDocument.docx", encoding="UTF-8", returnTuple=True)
        '''
        cmd = self._getCmd(self._cmdExtractMetadata, filePath, encoding)
        out, err = self._execute(cmd, encoding)
        if (returnTuple): return out, err
        return out

    def extractText(self, filePath, encoding="UTF-8", returnTuple=False):
        '''
        - Description:
          Extract text from a document
        
        - Params:
          filePath: The document file path
          encoding: The encoding (default = "UTF-8")
          returnTuple: If True return a tuple which contains both the output and the error (default = False)
        
        - Examples:
          text = extractText(filePath="MyDocument.docx")
          text, error = extractText(filePath="MyDocument.docx", encoding="UTF-8", returnTuple=True)
        '''
        cmd = self._getCmd(self._cmdExtractText, filePath, encoding)
        out, err = self._execute(cmd, encoding)
        return out, err

    # ===========
    # = PRIVATE =
    # ===========

    _cmdExtractMetadata = "${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java -jar ${TIKALIB_PATH} --metadata ${FILE_PATH}"
    _cmdExtractText = "${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java -jar ${TIKALIB_PATH} --encoding=${ENCODING} --text ${FILE_PATH}"

    def _getCmd(self, cmdModel, filePath, encoding):
        cmd = cmdModel.replace("${JAVA_HOME}", self.java_home)
        cmd = cmd.replace("${TIKALIB_PATH}", self.tika_lib_path)
        cmd = cmd.replace("${ENCODING}", encoding)
        cmd = cmd.replace("${FILE_PATH}", filePath)
        return cmd

    def _execute(self, cmd, encoding):
        import subprocess
        process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
        out, err = process.communicate()
        out = out.decode(encoding=encoding)
        err = err.decode(encoding=encoding)
        return out, err