how to transform a .pdf file to a .csv

Question

The file is divided into continents and its countries , i want continents to be as column headers. I have tried many things but unable to perform the action. here's the link to the pdf file

Not my downvote, but you're going to need a library to convert PDF to csv. — Tim Biegeleisen, May 01 '17 at 08:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 01 '17 at 08:15

If it's just this one file it might be easiest to copy and paste the data by hand.

Else, you'll need a tool to convert the PDF to text (there are some online and offline tools available that do that -- which is best depends on your OS and situation). Then you'll probably need to write some script to rearrange the text and create the csv you want.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 01 '17 at 10:34

Here is some ideas that can help you.
I use the package tabulizer "which bindings to the Tabula java library, which can be used to computationaly extract tables from PDF documents" (link).

library("tabulizer")
continents <- c("Africa","Americas","Asia","Australia/Oceania","Europe")    

f <- "Countries_where_English_is_an_official_language.pdf"
(rawTxt1 <- extract_text(f, page=1, encoding="UTF-8")) 

# Split according to continents   
(rawTxt2 <- strsplit(rawTxt1,"\r\n \r\n")[[1]])

# For trimming leading and trailing whitespace
trim <- function (x) gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$", "", x)

# Organize data in a list 
extrTxt <- vector(length(continents),mode="list")
cnt <- 1
for (k in 1:length(rawTxt2)) {
  rowk <- rawTxt2[k]
  spltxt <- trim(strsplit(rowk,"\r\n")[[1]])
  if (spltxt[1] %in% continents) {
    extrTxt[[cnt]] <- spltxt
    cnt <- cnt +1 
  }
}   
print(extrTxt)

Here is the results:

[[1]]
 [1] "Africa"       "Botswana"     "Cameroon"     "Ethiopia"     "Eritrea"      "The Gambia"   "Ghana"        "Kenya"       
 [9] "Lesotho"      "Liberia"      "Malawi"       "Mauritius"    "Namibia"      "Nigeria"      "Rwanda"       "Seychelles"  
[17] "Sierra Leone" "South Africa" "South Sudan"  "Sudan"        "Swaziland"    "Tanzania"     "Uganda"       "Zambia"      
[25] "Zimbabwe"    

[[2]]
 [1] "Americas"                         "Antigua and Barbuda"              "The Bahamas"                     
 [4] "Barbados"                         "Belize"                           "Canada"                          
 [7] "Dominica"                         "Grenada"                          "Guyana"                          
[10] "Jamaica"                          "Saint Kitts and Nevis"            "Saint Lucia"                     
[13] "Saint Vincent and the Grenadines" "Trinidad and Tobago"              "United States"                   

[[3]]
[1] "Asia"        "India"       "Pakistan"    "Philippines" "Singapore"  

[[4]]
 [1] "Australia/Oceania"              "Australia"                      "Fiji"                          
 [4] "Kiribati"                       "Marshall Islands"               "Federated States of Micronesia"
 [7] "Nauru"                          "New Zealand"                    "Palau"                         
[10] "Papua New Guinea"               "Samoa"                          "Solomon Islands"               
[13] "Tonga"                          "Tuvalu"                         "Vanuatu"                       

[[5]]
[1] "Europe"         "Ireland"        "Malta"          "United Kingdom"

how to transform a .pdf file to a .csv

2 Answers2