A PDF can feel like a sealed vault: perfect for sharing and collaboration but tricky to edit. To enable full-text search across millions of invoices or process customer contracts through advanced automation, the first step is to convert each PDF into a clean, lightweight, and searchable plain-text file. In this article, you will learn how to programmatically convert PDF to text in Node.js with a few concise API calls using our Node.js REST API and automate the conversion process.

Steps to Convert PDF to Text in Node.js

1. Import and set up GroupDocs.Conversion Cloud Node.js SDK
2. Obtain and configure your API credentials with ConvertApi
3. Initialize a ConvertSettings object and set up the input/output files
4. Define the PDF-specific options using PdfLoadOptions
5. Apply the text conversion options with TxtConvertOptions
6. Request PDF to TXT conversion with ConvertDocumentRequest and process it with convertDocument

The complete workflow only requires the outlined steps: set up the Cloud REST API, apply the credentials, configure conversion settings, and transform PDFs to plain text files in Node.js web or desktop apps. Developers can get consistent output across Windows, macOS, and Linux with the same Cloud API request and enjoy cross-platform compatibility. There are no dependencies on third-party software applications, and the cloud-based approach ascertains a lightning-fast PDF-to-text conversion experience.

Code to Convert PDF to Text in Node.js

Harnessing GroupDocs.Conversion Cloud Node.js SDK lets you convert PDF to plain-text in Node.js with minimal coding effort. Unlock advanced search and analysis use cases with accurate text data output minus local file management and maintenance burden. Our Cloud API equips you with developer-friendly PDF parsing and conversion tools. Unlike other solutions, our Node.js REST API facilitates impeccable PDF-to-text conversion, replacing hand-rolled parsing and heavyweight libraries.

If your roadmap includes more conversion options, check out our tutorial on Converting HTML to PDF Using the Node.js REST API.