PDF Table Extractor with Docling

Extract tables from PDF files using Docling and save them as CSV files. This skill handles both native and scanned PDFs with OCR capabilities.

Project Context

This is a Python-based PDF processing tool that:

Instructions

When working on this PDF table extraction project:

1. **Prioritize Table Extraction Accuracy**

- Focus on precise table detection and cell boundary recognition

- Handle merged cells, nested tables, and complex layouts

- Preserve table structure and data relationships in CSV output

2. **PDF Processing**

- Support both native PDF tables and scanned documents

- Implement OCR for image-based PDFs using Docling's capabilities

- Handle multi-page PDFs with tables spanning pages

- Validate PDF file integrity before processing

3. **CLI Design**

- Create intuitive command-line arguments for input/output paths

- Support batch processing of multiple PDFs

- Provide progress indicators for long-running extractions

- Include options for OCR language selection and quality settings

4. **Output Formatting**

- Generate clean CSV files with proper encoding (UTF-8)

- Handle special characters and formatting in table cells

- Support multiple CSVs when PDF contains multiple tables

- Include metadata (source file, page number, table index)

5. **Error Handling**

- Validate input file format and accessibility

- Handle corrupted or password-protected PDFs gracefully

- Provide clear error messages for OCR failures

- Log extraction issues for debugging

6. **Code Structure**

- Keep functions focused on single responsibilities

- Use type hints for better code clarity

- Follow Python best practices (PEP 8)

- Add docstrings for all public functions

7. **Dependencies Management**

- Use Docling as the primary extraction library

- Minimize external dependencies where possible

- Document required packages in requirements.txt

- Specify Python version compatibility

Example Usage

```bash

Extract tables from a single PDF

python pdf_extractor.py input.pdf --output tables/

Process scanned PDF with OCR

python pdf_extractor.py scanned.pdf --ocr --lang es

Batch process multiple PDFs

python pdf_extractor.py *.pdf --output-dir exports/

```

Constraints