Converting docx to pdf with pure python (on linux, without libreoffice)

Question

I'm dealing with a problem trying to develop a web-app, part of which converts uploaded docx files to pdf files (after some processing). With python-docx and other methods, I do not require a windows machine with word installed, or even libreoffice on linux, for most of the processing (my web server is pythonanywhere - linux but without libreoffice and without sudo or apt install permissions). But converting to pdf seems to require one of those. From exploring questions here and elsewhere, this is what I have so far:

import subprocess

try:
    from comtypes import client
except ImportError:
    client = None

def doc2pdf(doc):
    """
    convert a doc/docx document to pdf format
    :param doc: path to document
    """
    doc = os.path.abspath(doc) # bugfix - searching files in windows/system32
    if client is None:
        return doc2pdf_linux(doc)
    name, ext = os.path.splitext(doc)
    try:
        word = client.CreateObject('Word.Application')
        worddoc = word.Documents.Open(doc)
        worddoc.SaveAs(name + '.pdf', FileFormat=17)
    except Exception:
        raise
    finally:
        worddoc.Close()
        word.Quit()


def doc2pdf_linux(doc):
    """
    convert a doc/docx document to pdf format (linux only, requires libreoffice)
    :param doc: path to document
    """
    cmd = 'libreoffice --convert-to pdf'.split() + [doc]
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    p.wait(timeout=10)
    stdout, stderr = p.communicate()
    if stderr:
        raise subprocess.SubprocessError(stderr)

As you can see, one method requires comtypes, another requires libreoffice as a subprocess. Other than switching to a more sophisticated hosting server, is there any solution?

Answer 1

The PythonAnywhere help pages offer information on working with PDF files here: https://help.pythonanywhere.com/pages/PDF

Summary: PythonAnywhere has a number of Python packages for PDF manipulation installed, and one of them may do what you want. However, shelling out to abiword seems easiest to me. The shell command abiword --to=pdf filetoconvert.docx will convert the docx file to a PDF and produce a file named filetoconvert.pdf in the same directory as the docx. Note that this command will output an error message to the standard error stream complaining about XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (or at least it did for me), but it still works, and the error message can be ignored.

Answer 2

Another one you could use is libreoffice, however as the first responder said the quality will never be as good as using the actual comtypes.

anyways, after you have installed libreoffice, here is the code to do it.

from subprocess import  Popen
LIBRE_OFFICE = r"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.exe"

def convert_to_pdf(input_docx, out_folder):
    p = Popen([LIBRE_OFFICE, '--headless', '--convert-to', 'pdf', '--outdir',
               out_folder, input_docx])
    print([LIBRE_OFFICE, '--convert-to', 'pdf', input_docx])
    p.communicate()


sample_doc = 'file.docx'
out_folder = 'some_folder'
convert_to_pdf(sample_doc, out_folder)