Configuring the behavior of the parser

To change the behavior of the parser, create a Config object and pass it to the parser. In this case, we're setting the font space limit. Changing this value can be helpful when getText() returns a text with too many spaces.

$config = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Config();
$config->setFontSpaceLimit(-60);
$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser([], $config);
$pdf = $parser->parseFile('document.pdf');
// output extracted text
// echo $pdf->getText();

Config options overview

The Config class has the following options:

Option	Type	Default	Description
setDecodeMemoryLimit	Integer	0	If parsing fails because of memory exhaustion, you can set a lower memory limit for decoding operations.
setFontSpaceLimit	Integer	-50	Changing font space limit can be helpful when Parser::getText() returns a text with too many spaces.
setIgnoreEncryption	Boolean	false	Read PDFs that are not encrypted but have the encryption flag set. This is a temporary workaround, don't rely on it.
setHorizontalOffset	String		When words are broken up or when the structure of a table is not preserved, you may get better results when adapting setHorizontalOffset.
setPdfWhitespaces	String	\0\t\n\f\r
setPdfWhitespacesRegex	String	[\0\t\n\f\r ]
setRetainImageContent	Boolean	true	If parsing fails due to memory exhaustion, you can set the value to false. This will reduce memory usage, although it will no longer retain image content.

option setDecodeMemoryLimit + setRetainImageContent (manage memory usage)

If parsing fails because of memory exhaustion, you can use the following options.

$config = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Config();
// Whether to retain raw image data as content or discard it to save memory
$config->setRetainImageContent(false);
// Memory limit to use when de-compressing files, in bytes
$config->setDecodeMemoryLimit(1000000);
$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser([], $config);

option setHorizontalOffset

When words are broken up or when the structure of a table is not preserved, you can use setHorizontalOffset.

$config = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Config();
// An empty string can prevent words from breaking up
$config->setHorizontalOffset('');
// A tab can help preserve the structure of your document
$config->setHorizontalOffset("\t");
$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser([], $config);

option setFontSpaceLimit

Changing font space limit can be helpful when getText() returns a text with too many spaces.

$config = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Config();
$config->setFontSpaceLimit(-60);
$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser([], $config);
$pdf = $parser->parseFile('document.pdf');

option setIgnoreEncryption

In some cases PDF files may be internally marked as encrypted even though the content is not encrypted and can be read. This can be caused by the PDF being created by a tool that does not properly set the encryption flag. If you are sure that the PDF is not encrypted, you can ignore the encryption flag by setting the ignoreEncryption flag to true in a custom Config instance.

$config = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Config();
$config->setIgnoreEncryption(true);

$parser = new \Smalot\PdfParser\Parser([], $config);
$pdf = $parser->parseFile('document.pdf');