PDF Make Text Searchable or Unsearchable#

/pdf/makesearchable#

This method converts scanned PDF documents (where pages are fully or partially made from scanned images) or image files into a text-searchable PDF. It runs OCR and adds an invisible text layer on top of your document that can be used for text search, text indexing, etc.

  • Method: POST

  • Endpoint: /v1/pdf/makesearchable

Attributes#

Note

Attributes are case-sensitive and should be inside JSON for POST request, for example:

{
    "url": "https://example.com/file1.pdf"
}

Attribute

Description

Required

url

URL to the source file. 1

If the URL is an image file (jpg, png, tif) then the result will be converted into a text-searchable PDF.

yes

httpusername

HTTP auth user name if required to access source url.

no

httppassword

HTTP auth password if required to access source url.

no

lang

Set the language for OCR (text from image) to use for scanned PDF, PNG, and JPG documents input when extracting text. The default is eng. Other languages are also supported: deu, spa, chi_sim, jpn, and many others, see Language Support. You can also use 2 languages simultaneously like this: eng+deu or jpn+kor (any combination).

no

pages

Comma-separated indices of pages (or page ranges) that you want to use. The first-page index is always 0. For example, if you have a 7-page document that you want to be split into 3 separate PDFs but a different number of pages it would go like this: 0, 1, 2- or 1, 2, 3-7 which will result in 1 PDF with page one, 1 PDF with page two and one PDF with the rest of the pages. You can also use inverted page numbers adding ! before the number. E.g. !0 means “the last page”, 1-!1 means “from the second to the penultimate page”, and !1- - “last two pages”. Also, you can use a single asterisk (*) character as the range to split the document into separate pages. The input must be in string format.

no

password

Password of PDF file, the input must be in string format.

no

async

Set async to true for long processes to run in the background, API will then return a jobId which you can use with the Background Job Check endpoint to check the status of the process and retrieve the output while you can proceed with other tasks.

no

name

File name for the generated output, the input must be in string format.

no

expiration

Set the expiration time for the output link in minutes (default is 60 i.e 60 minutes or 1 hour), After this specified duration, any generated output file(s) will be automatically deleted from PDF.co Temporary Files Storage. The maximum duration for link expiration varies based on your current subscription plan. To store permanent input files (e.g. re-usable images, pdf templates, documents) consider using PDF.co Built-In Files Storage.

no

profiles

Use this parameter to set additional configurations for fine-tuning and extra options. Explore the Profiles section for more.

no

Query parameters#

No query parameters accepted.

Payload#

{
    "url": "https://pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
    "lang": "eng",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "profiles": ""
}

Response 2#

{
    "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/a0d52f35504e47148d1771fce875db7b/result.pdf",
    "pageCount": 1,
    "error": false,
    "status": 200,
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "remainingCredits": 99033681,
    "credits": 35
}

CURL#

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable' \
--header 'x-api-key: ' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "url": "https://pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
    "lang": "eng",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "profiles": ""
}'

Language Support#

Code

Description

afr

Afrikaans

amh

Amharic

ara

Arabic

asm

Assamese

aze

Azerbaijani

aze_cyrl

Azerbaijani - Cyrillic

bel

Belarusian

ben

Bengali

bod

Tibetan

bos

Bosnian

bul

Bulgarian

cat

Catalan; Valencian

ceb

Cebuano

ces

Czech

chi_sim

Chinese - Simplified

chi_tra

Chinese - Traditional

chr

Cherokee

cym

Welsh

dan

Danish

deu

German

dzo

Dzongkha

ell

Greek, Modern (1453-)

eng

English

enm

English, Middle (1100-1500)

epo

Esperanto

est

Estonian

eus

Basque

fas

Persian

fin

Finnish

fra

French

frk

Frankish

frm

French, Middle (ca. 1400-1600)

gle

Irish

glg

Galician

grc

Greek, Ancient (-1453)

guj

Gujarati

hat

Haitian; Haitian Creole

heb

Hebrew

hin

Hindi

hrv

Croatian

hun

Hungarian

iku

Inuktitut

ind

Indonesian

isl

Icelandic

ita

Italian

ita_old

Italian - Old

jav

Javanese

jpn

Japanese

kan

Kannada

kat

Georgian

kat_old

Georgian - Old

kaz

Kazakh

khm

Central Khmer

kir

Kirghiz; Kyrgyz

kor

Korean

kur

Kurdish

lao

Lao

lat

Latin

lav

Latvian

lit

Lithuanian

mal

Malayalam

mar

Marathi

mkd

Macedonian

mlt

Maltese

msa

Malay

mya

Burmese

nep

Nepali

nld

Dutch; Flemish

nor

Norwegian

ori

Oriya

pan

Panjabi; Punjabi

pol

Polish

por

Portuguese

pus

Pushto; Pashto

ron

Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan

rus

Russian

san

Sanskrit

sin

Sinhala; Sinhalese

slk

Slovak

slv

Slovenian

spa

Spanish; Castilian

spa_old

Spanish; Castilian - Old

sqi

Albanian

srp

Serbian

srp_latn

Serbian - Latin

swa

Swahili

swe

Swedish

syr

Syriac

tam

Tamil

tel

Telugu

tgk

Tajik

tgl

Tagalog

tha

Thai

tir

Tigrinya

tur

Turkish

uig

Uighur; Uyghur

ukr

Ukrainian

urd

Urdu

uzb

Uzbek

uzb_cyrl

Uzbek - Cyrillic

vie

Vietnamese

yid

Yiddish

/pdf/makeunsearchable#

This method converts PDF files into a “text unsearchable” version by converting your PDF into a “scanned” PDF file which is effectively a flat image.

  • Method: POST

  • Endpoint: /v1/pdf/makeunsearchable

Attributes#

Note

Attributes are case-sensitive and should be inside JSON for POST request, for example:

{
    "url": "https://example.com/file1.pdf"
}

Attribute

Description

Required

url

URL to the source file. 1

yes

httpusername

HTTP auth user name if required to access source url.

no

httppassword

HTTP auth password if required to access source url.

no

pages

Comma-separated indices of pages (or page ranges) that you want to use. The first-page index is always 0. For example, if you have a 7-page document that you want to be split into 3 separate PDFs but a different number of pages it would go like this: 0, 1, 2- or 1, 2, 3-7 which will result in 1 PDF with page one, 1 PDF with page two and one PDF with the rest of the pages. You can also use inverted page numbers adding ! before the number. E.g. !0 means “the last page”, 1-!1 means “from the second to the penultimate page”, and !1- - “last two pages”. Also, you can use a single asterisk (*) character as the range to split the document into separate pages. The input must be in string format.

no

password

Password of PDF file, the input must be in string format.

no

async

Set async to true for long processes to run in the background, API will then return a jobId which you can use with the Background Job Check endpoint to check the status of the process and retrieve the output while you can proceed with other tasks.

no

name

File name for the generated output, the input must be in string format.

no

expiration

Set the expiration time for the output link in minutes (default is 60 i.e 60 minutes or 1 hour), After this specified duration, any generated output file(s) will be automatically deleted from PDF.co Temporary Files Storage. The maximum duration for link expiration varies based on your current subscription plan. To store permanent input files (e.g. re-usable images, pdf templates, documents) consider using PDF.co Built-In Files Storage.

no

profiles

Use this parameter to set additional configurations for fine-tuning and extra options. Explore the Profiles section for more.

no

Query parameters#

No query parameters accepted.

Payload#

{
    "url": "pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.compdf-to-text/sample.pdf",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "profiles": ""
}

Response 2#

{
    "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/6b755238963a472abf67fd5e7ffafd79/result.pdf",
    "pageCount": 1,
    "error": false,
    "status": 200,
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "remainingCredits": 327244,
    "credits": 35
}

CURL#

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makeunsearchable' \
--header 'x-api-key: ' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "url": "pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.compdf-to-text/sample.pdf",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "profiles": ""
}'

Code samples#

Footnotes

1(1,2)

Supports links from Google Drive, Dropbox, and PDF.co Built-In Files Storage. To upload files via the API check out the File Upload section. Note: If you experience intermittent Too Many Requests or Access Denied errors, please try to add cache: to enable built-in URL caching. (e.g cache:https://example.com/file1.pdf) For data security, you have the option to encrypt output files and decrypt input files. Learn more about user-controlled data encryption.

2(1,2)

Main response codes as follows:

Code

Description

200

Success

400

Bad request. Typically happens because of bad input parameters, or because the input URLs can’t be reached, possibly due to access restrictions like needing a login or password.

401

Unauthorized

402

Not enough credits

445

Timeout error. To process large documents or files please use asynchronous mode (set the async parameter to true) and then check status using the /job/check endpoint. If a file contains many pages then specify a page range using the pages parameter. The number of pages of the document can be obtained using the /pdf/info endpoint.

Note

For more see the complete list of available response codes.