PDF Input

Overview

Who is this for? Developers building AI applications that need to process PDF documents for content extraction, analysis, summarization, or question answering.

What you'll achieve: Enable AI models to read, analyze, and extract information from PDF documents, including text extraction, document summarization, and content-based question answering across multiple providers.

The AI Proxy supports PDF document processing, allowing AI models to understand and analyze PDF content including text extraction, document structure analysis, and intelligent content processing.

Supported Providers & Formats

Provider Support Matrix

Supported Document Features

• Text Extraction: Extract plain text from PDF documents
• Document Structure: Understand headings, paragraphs, lists, and layout
• Table Processing: Extract and analyze tabular data
• OCR Capabilities: Process scanned PDFs and images within documents
• Multi-page Documents: Handle documents with multiple pages
• Mixed Content: Process documents with text, images, and graphics

Basic PDF Processing

Single PDF Analysis

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PDF with Base64 Upload

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Multiple PDF Processing

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Advanced PDF Features

Document Structure Analysis

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Text Extraction and Summarization

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PDF Question Answering

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Table Extraction

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Implementation Examples

Node.js PDF Processor

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Python PDF Analysis

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React PDF Upload Component

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Response Examples

Text Extraction Response

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Document Analysis Response

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Structured Data Extraction

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Use Cases

Document Management

• Contract Analysis: Extract key terms, dates, and clauses from contracts
• Invoice Processing: Extract line items, totals, and vendor information
• Legal Document Review: Analyze legal documents for compliance and key points
• Research Paper Analysis: Extract abstracts, conclusions, and citations

Content Processing

• Document Summarization: Generate concise summaries of long documents
• Content Classification: Categorize documents by type and content
• Translation Services: Extract text for translation workflows
• Accessibility: Convert PDFs to accessible text formats

Data Extraction

• Form Processing: Extract data from filled PDF forms
• Report Analysis: Parse financial reports and extract key metrics
• Academic Research: Extract data from research papers and studies
• Compliance Checking: Verify document compliance against standards

Knowledge Management

• Document Search: Enable semantic search across PDF collections
• Content Indexing: Create searchable indexes from document content
• Information Retrieval: Answer questions based on document content
• Archive Processing: Digitize and process historical documents

Provider-Specific Features

Anthropic Claude

• Large Files: Supports up to 500MB PDF files
• High Accuracy: Excellent text extraction and understanding
• Document Structure: Preserves document hierarchy and formatting
• OCR Quality: Strong optical character recognition for scanned documents

AWS Bedrock (Claude)

• Enterprise Scale: Handle large document processing workloads
• Security: Process sensitive documents with AWS security controls
• Integration: Seamless integration with other AWS services
• Batch Processing: Process multiple documents efficiently

Google AI (Gemini)

• Multi-modal: Combine PDF text with other content types
• Language Support: Strong multilingual document processing
• Real-time: Fast processing for interactive applications
• Cost Effective: Competitive pricing for document processing

Best Practices

File Preparation

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Performance Optimization

• File Size: Optimize PDF files before processing to reduce latency
• Page Limits: Consider splitting very large documents for better performance
• Caching: Cache extracted text for frequently accessed documents
• Compression: Use PDF compression to reduce upload times

Error Handling

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Security Considerations

• Data Privacy: Ensure sensitive documents are handled securely
• Access Control: Implement proper authentication for document uploads
• Content Filtering: Scan for malicious content before processing
• Audit Trails: Log document processing activities for compliance

File Format Requirements

PDF Specifications

• Version Support: PDF 1.4 through 2.0
• Maximum Size: Varies by provider (20MB - 500MB)
• Encoding: UTF-8 text encoding recommended
• Protection: Password-protected PDFs may require pre-processing

Optimization Guidelines

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Troubleshooting

Common Issues

File Too Large
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Unsupported Format
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Text Extraction Issues
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Performance Problems

• Slow Processing: Large files take longer to process
• Memory Usage: Monitor memory consumption for large documents
• Rate Limits: Respect provider rate limits for document processing
• Timeout Handling: Set appropriate timeouts for large documents

Cost Considerations

Token Usage

• Input Tokens: PDF content counts toward input token limits
• Processing Overhead: Document parsing may use additional tokens
• Provider Pricing: Different providers have varying costs for document processing
• Optimization: Extract only necessary content to minimize token usage

Efficiency Tips

• Selective Processing: Process only relevant sections of large documents
• Text Preprocessing: Clean and normalize text before sending to AI models
• Batch Operations: Group multiple small documents for efficient processing
• Result Caching: Store processed results to avoid reprocessing

Next Steps

• Vision: Combine PDF processing with image analysis
• Structured Outputs: Extract structured data from PDFs
• Tool Calling: Process PDFs with external tools