pyPdf for IndirectObject extraction

Question

Following this example, I can list all elements into a pdf file

import pyPdf
pdf = pyPdf.PdfFileReader(open(\"pdffile.pdf\"))
list(pdf.pages) # Process all t         


        

Answer 1

each element in pdf.pages is a dictionary, so assuming it's on page 1, pdf.pages[0]['/MYOBJECT'] should be the element you want.

You can try to print that individually or poke at it with help and dir in a python prompt for more about how to get the string you want

Edit:

after receiving a copy of the pdf, i found the object at pdf.resolvedObjects[0][558]['/Resources']['/Properties']['/MC0']['/MYOBJECT'] and the value can be retrieved via getData()

the following function gives a more generic way to solve this by recursively looking for the key in question

import types
import pyPdf
pdf = pyPdf.PdfFileReader(open('file.pdf'))
pages = list(pdf.pages)

def findInDict(needle,haystack):
    for key in haystack.keys():
        try:
            value = haystack[key]
        except:
            continue
        if key == needle:
            return value
        if type(value) == types.DictType or isinstance(value,pyPdf.generic.DictionaryObject):  
            x = findInDict(needle,value)
            if x is not None:
                return x

answer = findInDict('/MYOBJECT',pdf.resolvedObjects).getData()