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Mustafa Anas
Mustafa Anas

Posted on • Updated on

Convert any .pdf file 📚 into an audio 🔈 book with Python

(edit: I am glad you all liked this project! It got to be the top Python article of the week!)

A while ago I was messing around with google's Text to Speech python library.
This library basically reads out any piece of text and converts it to .mp3 file. Then I started thinking of making something useful out of it.

My installed, saved, and unread pdf books 😕

I like reading books. I really do. I think language and ideas sharing is fascinating. I have a directory at which I store pdf books that I plan on reading but I never do. So I thought hey, why dont I make them audio books and listen to them while I do something else 😄!

So I started planning how the script should look like.

  • Allow user to pick a .pdf file
  • Convert the file into one string
  • Output .mp3 file.

Without further needless words, lets get to it.

Allow user to pick a .pdf file

Python can read files easily. I just need to use the method open("filelocation", "rb") to open the file in reading mode. I dont want to be copying and pasting files to the directory of the code everytime I want to use the code though. So to make it easier we will use tkinter library to open up an interface that lets us choose the file.

from tkinter import Tk
from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename

Tk().withdraw() # we don't want a full GUI, so keep the root window from appearing
filelocation = askopenfilename() # open the dialog GUI
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Great. Now we have the file location stored in a filelocation variable.

Allow user to pick a .pdf file ✔️

Convert the file into one string

As I said before, to open a file in Python we just need to use the open() method. But we also want to convert the pdf file into regular pieces of text. So we might as well do it now.
To do that we will use a library called pdftotext.
Lets install it:

sudo pip install pdftotext
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Then:

from tkinter import Tk
from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename
import pdftotext

Tk().withdraw() # we don't want a full GUI, so keep the root window from appearing
filelocation = askopenfilename() # open the dialog GUI

with open(filelocation, "rb") as f:  # open the file in reading (rb) mode and call it f
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)  # store a text version of the pdf file f in pdf variable
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Great. Now we have the file stored in the variable pdf.
if you print this variable, you will get an array of strings. Each string is a line in the file. to get them all into one .mp3 file, we will have to make sure they are all stored as one string. So lets loop through this array and add them all to one string.

from tkinter import Tk
from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename
import pdftotext

Tk().withdraw() # we don't want a full GUI, so keep the root window from appearing
filelocation = askopenfilename() # open the dialog GUI

with open(filelocation, "rb") as f:  # open the file in reading (rb) mode and call it f
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)  # store a text version of the pdf file f in pdf variable

string_of_text = ''
for text in pdf:
    string_of_text += text
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Sweet 😄. Now we have it all as one piece of string.

Convert the file into one string ✔️

Output .mp3 file 🔈

Now we are ready to use the gTTS (google Text To Speech) library. all we need to do is pass the string we made, store the output in a variable, then use the save() method to output the file to the computer.
Lets install it:

sudo pip install gtts
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Then:

from tkinter import Tk
from tkinter.filedialog import askopenfilename
import pdftotext
from gtts import gTTS

Tk().withdraw() # we don't want a full GUI, so keep the root window from appearing
filelocation = askopenfilename() # open the dialog GUI

with open(filelocation, "rb") as f:  # open the file in reading (rb) mode and call it f
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)  # store a text version of the pdf file f in pdf variable

string_of_text = ''
for text in pdf:
    string_of_text += text

final_file = gTTS(text=string_of_text, lang='en')  # store file in variable
final_file.save("Generated Speech.mp3")  # save file to computer
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As simple as that! we are done 🎇
(edit: I am glad you all liked this article! The intention of all my writings is to be as simple as possible so all-levels readers can understand. If you wish to know more about customizing this API, please check this page: https://gtts.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

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Top comments (55)

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gadgetsteve profile image
Steve (Gadget) Barnes

I would suggest adding two lines to save the MP3 file to the same location and name as the PDF file.

from os.path import splitext

outname = splitext(filelocation)[0] + '.mp3'

then use:

final_file.save(outname)

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

That would be a nice add!

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sadorect profile image
sadorect

Oh, fantastic! I was looking to add this by myself but I don't know python coding. Thanks for bringing it up!

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ash_wanth profile image
Ashwanth

I am really intrigued by this article. I tried everything to install pdftotext lib on my mac but was unsuccessful. I keep getting this error --> " error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1"
I installed OS dependencies , Poppler using brew but didn't work. Can you anyone help me?

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

make sure you have these two installed:
python-dev
libevent-dev

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ash_wanth profile image
Ashwanth

Yup i installed them . NO matter what i do, i keep getting this error --> "ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1"
and i installed gcc too!

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redeving profile image
Kelvin Thompson • Edited

I just started getting the same thing on my system (Ubuntu). After a lot of Google/StackExchange, this worked (copy from my annotations):

For whatever reason, in order to install the following two, I had to install some stuff on my Ubuntu Mate ** system-wide ** to get rid of compile errors:

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools python3-dev libpython3-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential libpoppler-cpp-dev pkg-config python-dev

I'm using PyCharmCE. After the above, I could use this in the PyCharm terminal:

pip3 install pdftotext
pip3 install gtts

After I did all of that, successful! Program works like a charm (hehe).

Cheers!

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

Thanks for sharing your solution!

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redeving profile image
Kelvin Thompson

A pleasure to finally be able to give back a little!

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ash_wanth profile image
Ashwanth

I have a Mac, brother. Can't use app-get. what should i do now?

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davidsouza profile image
David Souza

Are you using the default Python 2.7?? You may need to use Python 3.x

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davidsouza profile image
David Souza

I got this working on the Mac using Python 3.7.4 using virtual env and brew. Works fine.

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jogeshpi03 profile image
Jogesh

I am using docker with my Macbook without any issue. And it is a great alternative to start working on any environment, stack, etc.

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maskedman99 profile image
Rohit Prasad

They mention what all has to be installed for various O.S's in here pypi.org/project/pdftotext/

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nezhar profile image
Harald Nezbeda

Have you tried to install the OS dependencies as specified in the docs? github.com/jalan/pdftotext#macos

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schwepmo profile image
schwepmo

Really cool and quick project! One thing I would suggest is to use python's join() method instead of looping over the list of strings. I think that's the more "pythonic" way and should also perform a little better.

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

Thanks for the tip!
I sure will start using that

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narenandu profile image
Narendra Kumar Vadapalli

I am on fedora and had to install the following dependencies to get this working before I could pip install pdftotext

Sequence would be

sudo dnf install gcc-c++ pkgconfig poppler-cpp-devel python-devel redhat-rpm-config
pip install pdftotext gtts
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kriska profile image
Kristina Gocheva • Edited

My favorite part is (if I am not mistaken) that this would work for any language PDF as long as google text to speech supports the language.

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

hahaha omg how could I not think about doing the research.
You're true.
check this out
cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/

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suryabranwal profile image
SURAJ BRANWAL

Thanks a lot for the article, I tried a lot finding such thing but now am able to read(listen) to all my untouched PDFs.

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

That was my intention.
Glad you liked it :)

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suryabranwal profile image
SURAJ BRANWAL

I tried this on Win10, but was unable to install pdftotext package in Python 3.8.
Hence, I did this using another way :

github.com/suryabranwal/TIL/blob/m...

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sadorect profile image
sadorect • Edited

An observation here ( I'm sure this has to do with the gtts engine though ):

The reader would rather spell some words than pronounce the actual words and its a bit strange. I did a conversion where the word "first" was spelt rather than pronounced. Initially, I thought such occurs when words are not properly written and the text recognition engine is affected. "Five" was pronounced fai-vee-e,and other spellings like that.

Overall though, it is manageable and one can make good sense out of the readings. Now I can "read" my e-books faster with this ingenious solution.

Thanks again, @mustapha

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codeperfectplus profile image
Deepak Raj
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sadorect profile image
sadorect

This is a life-saving procedure you shared. I tried it and works like charm. Thank you so very much.

I have a question though...
I know this is a simplistic approach to just explain the basics( and its awesome). Please, is it possible to change the reader's voice and reading speed?

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mustafaanaskh99 profile image
Mustafa Anas

I am glad you liked it!
The intention of all my writings is to be as simple as possible so all-levels readers can understand.
If you wish to know more about customizing this API, please check this page:
gtts.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

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dennisboscodemello1989 profile image
dennisboscodemello1989

Is there any way to pop up an option for choosing the page from which the reading will start & option for choosing the pdf file is there, I am pasting the code

import pyttsx3 as py
import PyPDF2 as pd

pdfReader = pd.PdfFileReader(open('Excel-eBook.pdf', 'rb'))

from tkinter.filedialog import *

speaker = py.init()

voices = speaker.getProperty('voices')

for voice in voices:
speaker.setProperty('voice', voice.id)

book = askopenfilename()
pdfreader = pd.PdfFileReader(book)
pages = pdfreader.numPages

for num in range(0, pages): # O is the number from where the reading will start
page = pdfreader.getPage(num)
text = page.extractText()
player = py.init()
player.say(text)
player.runAndWait()

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probeta1 profile image
Abhinav Kumar Srivastava

Really cool !
However , when I tried to convert a decent sized pdf file (3.0 MB) , I got the following error :

"gtts.tts.gTTSError: 500 (Internal Server Error) from TTS API. Probable
cause: Uptream API error. Try again later."

Is Gtts blocking me from using their API ? How shall I resolve this ?

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dnaboka profile image
Dima Naboka • Edited

I have a problem running [vagrant@centos8 ~]$ sudo pip3 install pdftotext on CentoOS8:
error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
Command "/usr/bin/python3.6 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;file='/tmp/pip-build-7_3v7vuh/pdftotext/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(file);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, file, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-ac0irxfy-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-7_3v7vuh/pdftotext/

I'm running Python 3.6.8, do I have to use Python 3.8 explicitly?

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abragred profile image
abragred • Edited

This seems a very nice idea, might get my friend that knows how to do stuff with Python to get this done for me. I'm not at such a high level of technology use to be able to do this stuff alone, but I'd like to learn. One thing that I'm proud of myself that I can help my family with is working with PDF forms. I especially help my mom a lot cause she has a lot of forms to fill for her job, but has a big lack of technology talent. I found this site pdfliner.com/alternative/sejda_alt... that lets me edit anything I want.

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kushagra0347 profile image
Kushagra0347

This code gets stuck after I add PDF. can anyone provide any solution to this?

from tkinter import *
import pygame
import PyPDF2
from gtts import gTTS
from tkinter import filedialog
from os.path import splitext

root = Tk();
root.title('PDF Audio Player')
root.geometry("500x300")

Initialise Pygame Mixer

pygame.mixer.init()

Add PDF Function

def addPDF():
PDF = filedialog.askopenfilename(title="Choose a PDF", filetypes=(("PDF Files", "*.PDF"), ))
PDF_dir = PDF

# Strip Out the Directory Info and .pdf extension
# So That Only the Title Shows Up
PDF = PDF.replace('C:/Users/kusha/Downloads/', '')
PDF = PDF.replace(".pdf", '')

audioBookBox.insert(END, PDF)
PDFtoAudio(PDF_dir)
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def PDFtoAudio(PDF_dir):
file = open(PDF_dir, 'rb')
reader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(file)
totalPages = reader.numPages
string = ""

for i in range(0, totalPages):
page = reader.getPage(i)
text = page.extractText()
string += text

outName = splitext(PDF_dir)[0] + '.mp3'
audioFile = gTTS(text=string, lang='en') # store file in variable
audioFile.save(outName) # save file to computer

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Play Selected PDF Function

def play():
audio = audioBookBox.get(ACTIVE)
audio = f'C:/Users/kusha/Downloads/{audio}.mp3'

pygame.mixer.music.load(audio)
pygame.mixer.music.play(loops=0)
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Create Playlist Box

audioBookBox = Listbox(root, bg="black", fg="red", width = 70, selectbackground="gray", selectforeground="black")
audioBookBox.pack(pady=20)

Define Player Control Button Images

backBtnImg = PhotoImage(file='Project Pics/back50.png')
forwardBtnImg = PhotoImage(file='Project Pics/forward50.png')
playBtnImg = PhotoImage(file='Project Pics/play50.png')
pauseBtnImg = PhotoImage(file='Project Pics/pause50.png')
stopBtnImg = PhotoImage(file='Project Pics/stop50.png')

Create Player Control Frame

controlsFrame = Frame(root)
controlsFrame.pack()

Create Player Control Buttons

backBtn = Button(controlsFrame, image=backBtnImg, borderwidth=0)
forwardBtn = Button(controlsFrame, image=forwardBtnImg, borderwidth=0)
playBtn = Button(controlsFrame, image=playBtnImg, borderwidth=0, command=play)
pauseBtn = Button(controlsFrame, image=pauseBtnImg, borderwidth=0)
stopBtn = Button(controlsFrame, image=stopBtnImg, borderwidth=0)

backBtn.grid(row=0, column=0, padx=10)
forwardBtn.grid(row=0, column=1, padx=10)
playBtn.grid(row=0, column=2, padx=10)
pauseBtn.grid(row=0, column=3, padx=10)
stopBtn.grid(row=0, column=4, padx=10)

Create Menu

myMenu = Menu(root)
root.config(menu=myMenu)

Add the converted audio file in the menu

addAudioMenu = Menu(myMenu)
myMenu.add_cascade(label="Add PDF", menu=addAudioMenu)
addAudioMenu.add_command(label="Add One PDF", command=addPDF)

root.mainloop()

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droxzy profile image
Priyanshu Kumar

will it also read page number, footer or any extra garbage text?

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vansul profile image
Vaibhav Kaushik • Edited

Yes, of course as they are also a type of text.

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droxzy profile image
Priyanshu Kumar

Using Machine learning you can avoid those things.