Automate Boring Stuff Ch13 PyPDF2: pdfReader is not defined - pypdf

Question

While trying to follow the instructions on the book, I encountered an error which I am afraid is due to my wrong understanding about the loop. My code is as below.
#! Python3
import PyPDF2, os
# Loop through all the PDF files
for filename in pdfFiles:
try:
pdfFileObj = open(filename, 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
except FileNotFoundError:
print('File not foungd ' + filename)
pass
# Read through all the PDF files.
for pageNum in range(1, pdfReader.numPages):
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(pageNum)
pdfWriter.addPage(pageObj)
=====
and the result is:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/…automate_py/combinesPdf.py", line 24, in <module>
for pageNum in range(1, pdfReader.numPages):
NameError: name 'pdfReader' is not defined
Does anyone know why is pdfReader not found? Very appreciated.
I have tried adjust indentation but it didn't seem to work. :(

Answer 1

You have committed an indentation mistake. pdfReader is defined within the first loop of your piece of code, so the second one should be inside that block. This is the entire commented code of that sample on the book:
#! python3
# combinePdfs.py - Combines all the PDFs in the current working directory into
# a single PDF.
import PyPDF2, os
# Get all the PDF filenames.
pdfFiles = []
for filename in os.listdir('.'):
if filename.endswith('.pdf'):
pdfFiles.append(filename)
pdfFiles.sort()
pdfWriter = PyPDF2.PdfFileWriter()
# Loop through all the PDF files.
for filename in pdfFiles:
pdfFileObj = open(filename, 'rb')
pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
# Loop through all the pages (except the first) and add them.
for pageNum in range(1, pdfReader.numPages):
pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(pageNum)
pdfWriter.addPage(pageObj)
# Save the resulting PDF to a file.
pdfOutput = open('allminutes.pdf', 'wb')
pdfWriter.write(pdfOutput)
pdfOutput.close()

Answer 2

Had the same issue (Python 3.x, Windows 10). This worked for me:
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
with open("C:/yourpdf.pdf", 'rb') as f:
pdf = PdfFileReader(f)
page = pdf.getPage(1)
text = page.extractText()
print(text)