Comparing PDF Table Extraction Tools

With the mountains of Python code that it’s possible to generate now, how’s your code review going? What are the limitations of human review, and where does machine review excel? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week with another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We discuss a recent piece from Glyph titled, “What Is Code Review For?” We dig into the limitations of human review and where software tools like linters and formatters can help you. We cover the challenges developers and open-source maintainers face with the rise of LLM-generated code and pull requests.

We also share other articles and projects from the Python community, including a collection of recent releases and announcements, creating publication-ready tables from DataFrames, choosing the right Python task queue, mastering context managers, statically checking Python dicts for completeness, an open-source inventory management system, and an ORM-based backend for Django tasks.

This episode is sponsored by SerpApi.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:02:32 – DuckDB 1.5.0 Released
• 00:03:11 – PyPy v7.3.21 Released
• 00:03:30 – Sunsetting Jazzband
• 00:04:08 – Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty
• 00:05:19 – Great Tables: Publication-Ready Tables From DataFrames
• 00:10:24 – Comparing PDF Table Extraction Tools
• 00:11:53 – Sponsor: SerpApi
• 00:12:55 – Choosing the Right Python Task Queue
• 00:16:57 – Mastering Python Context Managers
• 00:22:40 – Statically Checking Python Dicts for Completeness
• 00:25:00 – Spotlight: Intermediate Python Deep Dive
• 00:26:16 – What Is Code Review For?
• 00:43:48 – usdatasets: Installable Collection of Datasets on USA
• 00:45:22 – InvenTree: OSS Inventory Management System
• 00:48:01 – django-tasks-db: An ORM-based Backend for Django Tasks
• 00:49:41 – Thanks and goodbye

News:

• DuckDB 1.5.0 Released
• PyPy v7.3.21 Released
• Sunsetting Jazzband
• Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty
• OpenAI Acquiring Astral: A 4th Option for Fun - Will Vincent

Show Links:

• Great Tables: Publication-Ready Tables From DataFrames – Learn how to create publication-ready tables from Pandas and Polars DataFrames using Great Tables. Format currencies, add sparklines, apply conditional styling, and export to PNG.
• Comparing PDF Table Extraction Tools – This article explores three Python tools for PDF table extraction: Docling, Marker, and LlamaParse. Learn which handles merged cells and multi-level headers best.
• Choosing the Right Python Task Queue – Python has great options for task queues. Choosing between Celery and RQ isn’t an easy decision. Jump in and learn how each option compares!
• Mastering Python Context Managers – Go beyond just using open() and learn how Python context managers work and where they are useful.
• Statically Checking Python Dicts for Completeness – To keep code concerns separate, you might have two data structures (like an Enum and a dict) that are supposed to change in sequence: adding a value to the Enum requires you to add a similar value in the dict. This is common when separating business logic from UI code. This article shows you ways of making sure the corresponding changes happen together.

Discussion:

• What Is Code Review For? – This post explores just what you should and should not use code reviews for. Learn when to use linters to catch problems vs when human review is important.
• Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work

Projects:

• usdatasets: Installable Collection of Datasets on USA
• InvenTree: OSS Inventory Management System
• django-tasks-db: An ORM-based Backend for Django Tasks

Additional Links:

• Episode #214: Build Captivating Display Tables in Python With Great Tables
• Great Blogposts – great_tables
• Python’s with Statement: Manage External Resources Safely – Real Python
• Context Managers and Using Python’s with Statement – Real Python
• Episode #183: Exploring Code Reviews in Python and Automating the Process
• Episode #246: Learning Intermediate Python With a Deep Dive Course

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• Modern Python Linting With Ruff
• Context Managers and Using Python's with Statement
• Creating Asynchronous Tasks With Celery and Django

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