Parse a PDF - Writer AI Studio

Documentation Index

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Deprecation notice: The parse PDF API endpoint at /v1/tools/pdf-parser/{file_id} is deprecated and will be removed on December 22, 2025. Migration path: We plan to introduce a prebuilt PDF parsing tool for chat completions that will provide similar functionality. This tool will work similarly to other prebuilt tools like the LLM tool. We will provide more details about this alternative when it becomes available.

The PDF parser endpoint converts PDF documents into other formats. This is useful when you need to extract and process text content from PDF files for further analysis or integration into your workflow.

Use cases

• Converting research papers from PDF to searchable text for analysis
• Extracting content from business reports for data processing
• Converting PDF documentation into markdown format for web publishing
• Making archived PDF documents searchable and analyzable
• Automating data extraction from PDF forms and invoices

You need an API key to access the Writer API. Get an API key by following the steps in the API quickstart. We recommend setting the API key as an environment variable in a .env file with the name WRITER_API_KEY.

Endpoint overview

URL: POST https://api.writer.com/v1/tools/pdf-parser

cURL

curl --location 'https://api.writer.com/v1/tools/pdf-parser/<file-id>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $WRITER_API_KEY" \
--data '{
  "format": "markdown"
}'

Python

from writerai import Writer

# Initialize the Writer client. If you don't pass the `api_key` parameter,
# the client looks for the `WRITER_API_KEY` environment variable.
client = Writer()

response = client.tools.parse_pdf(
    file_id="file_id",
    format="text",
)
print(response.content)

JavaScript

import Writer from 'writer-sdk';

// Initialize the Writer client. If you don't pass the `api_key` parameter,
// the client looks for the `WRITER_API_KEY` environment variable.
const client = new Writer();

async function main() {
  const response = await client.tools.parsePdf('file_id', { format: 'text' });

console.log(response.content);
}

main();

Path parameters

Before using the PDF parser, you’ll need to upload your PDF file to the Writer API and obtain its file ID. Learn more about how to upload files with the Files API.

Request body

The request body includes the following parameters:

Response parameters

Returns an object with a content field containing the extracted text in the specified format.

{
  "content": "..."
}