PDF Search and Delete Text#

Available Methods#

/pdf/edit/delete-text#

Search text in PDF and remove found text from PDF.

  • Method: POST

  • Endpoint: /v1/pdf/edit/delete-text

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

searchStrings[]

The array of strings to search.

yes

replacementLimit

Limit the number of searches & replacements for every item. The default value is 0 which means unlimited searches and replacements so every found occurrence will be replaced.

no

caseSensitive

Set to false to use case-insensitive search.

no

regex

Set to true to use regular expression for search string(s).

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

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

profiles

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

no

Note

To apply a block out color to the text which was deleted use the profiles attribute with, e.g.:

"profiles": "{'UsePatch': true, 'PatchColor': '#000000'}"

Query parameters#

No query parameters accepted.

Payload#

{
    "url": "https://pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pdf-to-text/sample.pdf",
    "name": "pdfWithTextDeleted",
    "caseSensitive": "false",
    "searchString": "Invoice",
    "replacementLimit": 0,
    "async": false
}

Response 2#

{
    "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ZOSEQZFNVCYLD5N5CJFVIYQKBVLR8OKD/pdfWithTextDeleted.pdf?X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Security-Token=FwoGZXIvYXdzECYaDKOO4WmO5C5shyOYYSKCAVsAo6VkB5HQjTBd9dMlJujQdEkPfNdPeLfq2mF54s2ESZBmIAJ5UgDUo3J9R475CCS4M3nuuo%2FSJwRy5gNiJdb1ZY0uCtP87x83nH%2B%2BSDu5JK%2F%2BEOrd3MREt8KE3BsQOrv%2FKMdnK%2BT5nJ2x2hC87vHue%2FudY7%2FWX54vx4tfFobEyhEozLbPnwYyKOdEsYYWH7e8tm7XV4UeKxCoKMaXSEPvOod80hR62qXnEI42fOsON3M%3D&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA4NRRSZPHLUVIAIPX/20230220/us-west-2/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20230220T205521Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=9f79c1a30d4f373e495e735e908375dad2ae6dcafcee761a477748c2b8298605",
    "pageCount": 1,
    "error": false,
    "status": 200,
    "name": "pdfWithTextDeleted.pdf",
    "credits": 21,
    "duration": 189,
    "remainingCredits": 96235635
}

CURL#

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/edit/delete-text' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'x-api-key: ' \
--data-raw '{
    "url": "https://pdfco-test-files.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pdf-to-text/sample.pdf",
    "name": "pdfWithTextDeleted",
    "caseSensitive": "false",
    "searchString": "Invoice",
    "replacementLimit": 0,
    "async": false
}'

Code samples#

Footnotes

1

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

Response codes as follows:

Code

Description

200

The request has succeeded

400

Bad input parameters

401

Unauthorized

403

Not enough credits

405

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.