tabula-py is a simple Python wrapper of tabula-java, which can read table of PDF. You can read tables from PDF and convert into pandas's DataFrame.

• Java
  • Confirmed working with Java 7, 8
• pandas

pip install tabula-py

tabula-py enables you to extract table from PDF into DataFrame and JSON. It also can extract tables from PDF and save file as CSV, TSV or JSON.

import tabula

# Read pdf into DataFrame
df = tabula.read_pdf("test.pdf", options)

# Read remote pdf into DataFrame
df2 = tabula.read_pdf("https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula-java/raw/master/src/test/resources/technology/tabula/arabic.pdf")

# convert PDF into CSV
tabula.convert_into("test.pdf", "output.csv", output_format="csv")

See example notebook

• pages (str, int, list of int, optional)
  • An optional values specifying pages to extract from. It allows str, int, list of int.
  • Example: 1, '1-2,3', 'all' or [1,2]. Default is 1
• guess (bool, optional):
  • Guess the portion of the page to analyze per page.
• area (list of float, optional):
  • Portion of the page to analyze(top,left,bottom,right).
  • Example: [269.875, 12.75, 790.5, 561]. Default is entire page
• spreadsheet (bool, optional):
  • Force PDF to be extracted using spreadsheet-style extraction (if there are ruling lines separating each cell, as in a PDF of an Excel spreadsheet)
• nospreadsheet (bool, optional):
  • Force PDF not to be extracted using spreadsheet-style extraction (if there are ruling lines separating each cell, as in a PDF of an Excel spreadsheet)
• password (bool, optional):
  • Password to decrypt document. Default is empty
• silent (bool, optional):
  • Suppress all stderr output.
• columns (list, optional):
  • X coordinates of column boundaries.
  • Example: [10.1, 20.2, 30.3]
• format (str, optional):
  • Format for output file or extracted object. (CSV, TSV, JSON)
• output_path (str, optional):
  • Output file path. File format of it is depends on format.
  • Same as --outfile option of tabula-java.

Yes. You can use options argument as following. The format is same as cli of tabula-java.

read_pdf_table(file_path, options="--columns 10.1,20.2,30.3")

In short, you can extract with area and spreadsheet option.

In [4]: tabula.read_pdf('./table.pdf', spreadsheet=True, area=(337.29, 226.49, 472.85, 384.91))
Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
Out[4]:
  Unnamed: 0 Col2 Col3 Col4 Col5
0          A    B   12    R    G
1        NaN    R    T   23    H
2          B    B   33    R    A
3          C    T   99    E    M
4          D    I   12   34    M
5          E    I    I    W   90
6        NaN    1    2    W    h
7        NaN    4    3    E    H
8          F    E   E4    R    4

How to use area option

According to tabula-java wiki, there is a explain how to specify the area: https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula-java/wiki/Using-the-command-line-tabula-extractor-tool#grab-coordinates-of-the-table-you-want

For example, using macOS's preview, I got area information of this PDF:

java -jar ./target/tabula-0.9.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar -p all -a $y1,$x1,$y2,$x2 -o $csvfile $filename

given

Note the left, top, height, and width parameters and calculate the following:

y1 = top
x1 = left
y2 = top + height
x2 = left + width

I confirmed with tabula-java:

java -jar ./tabula/tabula-0.9.1-jar-with-dependencies.jar -g -r -a "337.29,226.49,472.85,384.91" table.pdf

Without -r(same as --spreadsheet) option, it does not work properly.