PDF Make Text Searchable or Unsearchable

These methods helps to turn PDF and scanned JPG, PNG images into text-searchable PDF. MakeUnSearchable method is doing the opposite: converts PDF document into a “scanned” pdf document is it was printed and then scanned back.

Available methods

[POST] /pdf/makesearchable
[POST] /pdf/makeunsearchable

[POST] /pdf/makesearchable

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

url required. URL to the source file. Supports links from Google Drive, Dropbox and from built-in PDF.co files storage. For uploading files via API please check Files Upload section. If you are randomly getting Too Many Requests or Access Denied error for your input url, please try to add cache: to enable built-in url caching.
lang optional. Sets OCR language to be used for scanned PDF, PNG, JPG douments when extracting text from them. Default is “eng”. Supported values: eng, spa, deu, fra and many others. You can also specify 2 languages to be used, for example: eng+deu.
pages optional. Comma-separated list of page indices (or ranges) to process. IMPORTANT: the very first page starts at 0 (zero). To set a range use the dash -, for example: 0,2-5,7-. To set a range from index to the last page use range like this: 2- (from page #3 as the index starts at zero and till the of the document). For ALL pages just leave this param empty. Example: 0,2-5,7- means first page, then 3rd page to 6th page, and then the range from 8th (index = 7) page till the end of the document. Must be a String.
password optional. Password of PDF file. Must be a String.
async optional. Runs processing asynchronously. Returns Use JobId that you may use with /job/check to check state of the processing (possible states: working, failed, aborted and success). Must be one of: true, false.
encrypt optional. Enable encryption for output file. Must be one of: true, false.
profiles optional. Must be a String. You can set additional and extra options using this parameter that allows you to set custom configuration. See profiles samples for examples.

Description

Method: POST
URL: /v1/pdf/makesearchable

Query parameters

No query parameters accepted.

Body payload

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

Example responses

/pdf/makesearchable

{
    "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/94628af2d2fd4621aad039f2d0701d66/result.pdf",
    "pageCount": 1,
    "error": false,
    "status": 200,
    "name": "result.pdf",
    "remainingCredits": 60607
}

Code Snippets

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://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
    "lang": "eng",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",    
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "encrypt": false,
    "profiles": ""
}'

JavaScript

var myHeaders = new Headers();
myHeaders.append("x-api-key", "");
myHeaders.append("Content-Type", "application/json");

var raw = JSON.stringify({
 "url": "https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
 "lang": "eng",
 "pages": "",
 "name": "result.pdf",
 "password": "",
 "async": "false",
 "encrypt": false,
 "profiles": ""
});

var requestOptions = {
	method: 'POST',
	headers: myHeaders,
	body: raw,
	redirect: 'follow'
};

fetch("https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable", requestOptions)
	.then(response => response.text())
	.then(result => console.log(result))
	.catch(error => console.log('error', error));

NodeJs

var request = require('request');
var options = {
	'method': 'POST',
	'url': 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable',
	'headers': {
		'x-api-key': '',
		'Content-Type': 'application/json'
	},
	body: JSON.stringify({
	 "url": "https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
	 "lang": "eng",
	 "pages": "",
	 "name": "result.pdf",
	 "password": "",
	 "async": "false",
	 "encrypt": false,
	 "profiles": ""
	})

};
request(options, function (error, response) {
	if (error) throw new Error(error);
	console.log(response.body);
});

PHP

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
	CURLOPT_URL => 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable',
	CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
	CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
	CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
	CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
	CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
	CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
	CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
	CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>'{
    "url": "https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
    "lang": "eng",
    "pages": "",
    "name": "result.pdf",    
    "password": "",
    "async": "false",
    "encrypt": false,
    "profiles": ""
}',
	CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
		'x-api-key: ',
		'Content-Type: application/json'
	),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Java

import java.io.*;
import okhttp3.*;
public class main {
	public static void main(String []args) throws IOException{
		OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient().newBuilder()
			.build();
		MediaType mediaType = MediaType.parse("application/json");
		RequestBody body = RequestBody.create(mediaType, "{\n    \"url\": \"https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf\",\n    \"lang\": \"eng\",\n    \"pages\": \"\",\n    \"name\": \"result.pdf\",    \n    \"password\": \"\",\n    \"async\": \"false\",\n    \"encrypt\": false,\n    \"profiles\": \"\"\n}");
		Request request = new Request.Builder()
			.url("https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable")
			.method("POST", body)
			.addHeader("x-api-key", "")
			.addHeader("Content-Type", "application/json")
			.build();
		Response response = client.newCall(request).execute();
		System.out.println(response.body().string());
	}
}

C#

using System;
using RestSharp;
namespace HelloWorldApplication {
	class HelloWorld {
		static void Main(string[] args) {
			var client = new RestClient("https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable");
			client.Timeout = -1;
			var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
			request.AddHeader("x-api-key", "");
			request.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
			var body = @"{" + "\n" +
			@"    ""url"": ""https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf""," + "\n" +
			@"    ""lang"": ""eng""," + "\n" +
			@"    ""pages"": """"," + "\n" +
			@"    ""name"": ""result.pdf"",    " + "\n" +
			@"    ""password"": """"," + "\n" +
			@"    ""async"": ""false""," + "\n" +
			@"    ""encrypt"": false," + "\n" +
			@"    ""profiles"": """"" + "\n" +
			@"}";
			request.AddParameter("application/json", body,  ParameterType.RequestBody);
			IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);
			Console.WriteLine(response.Content);
		}
	}
}

Python

import requests
import json

url = "https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable"

payload = json.dumps({
 "url": "https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf",
 "lang": "eng",
 "pages": "",
 "name": "result.pdf",
 "password": "",
 "async": "false",
 "encrypt": False,
 "profiles": ""
})
headers = {
	'x-api-key': '',
	'Content-Type': 'application/json'
}

response = requests.request("POST", url, headers=headers, data=payload)

print(response.text)

Powershell

$headers = New-Object "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary[[String],[String]]"
$headers.Add("x-api-key", "")
$headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/json")

$body = "{`n    `"url`": `"https://bytescout-com.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/demo-files/cloud-api/pdf-make-searchable/sample.pdf`",`n    `"lang`": `"eng`",`n    `"pages`": `"`",`n    `"name`": `"result.pdf`",    `n    `"password`": `"`",`n    `"async`": `"false`",`n    `"encrypt`": false,`n    `"profiles`": `"`"`n}"

$response = Invoke-RestMethod 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/pdf/makesearchable' -Method 'POST' -Headers $headers -Body $body
$response | ConvertTo-Json

[POST] /pdf/makeunsearchable

This method converts PDF files into “text unsearchable” pdf which are the same as if you printed and then scanned your PDF. In other words, this method converts your pdf into a “scanned” pdf file where everything is turned into an image.

url required. URL to the source file. Supports links from Google Drive, Dropbox and from built-in PDF.co files storage. For uploading files via API please check Files Upload section. If you are randomly getting Too Many Requests or Access Denied error for your input url, please try to add cache: to enable built-in url caching.
pages optional. Comma-separated list of page indices (or ranges) to process. IMPORTANT: the very first page starts at 0 (zero). To set a range use the dash -, for example: 0,2-5,7-. To set a range from index to the last page use range like this: 2- (from page #3 as the index starts at zero and till the of the document). For ALL pages just leave this param empty. Example: 0,2-5,7- means first page, then 3rd page to 6th page, and then the range from 8th (index = 7) page till the end of the document. Must be a String.
password optional. Password of PDF file. Must be a String.
async optional. Runs processing asynchronously. Returns Use JobId that you may use with /job/check to check state of the processing (possible states: working, failed, aborted and success). Must be one of: true, false.
encrypt optional. Enable encryption for output file. Must be one of: true, false.
profiles optional. Must be a String. You can set additional and extra options using this parameter that allows you to set custom configuration. See profiles samples for examples.