How to read PDF text in PHP

Install the smalot/pdfparser Composer package:

 composer require smalot/pdfparser

Parse a PDF file and extract its text:

  <?php

  require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

  use Smalot\PdfParser\Parser;

  $parser = new Parser();

  $pdf = $parser->parseFile(__DIR__ . '/example.pdf');
  $text = $pdf->getText();

  echo $text;

  # If you want to extract text page by page:
  foreach ($pdf->getPages() as $pageNumber => $page) {
      echo 'Page ' . ($pageNumber + 1) . PHP_EOL;
      echo $page->getText() . PHP_EOL;
  }