Scans pdfs for links written in plaintext and checks if they are active or returns an error code. It then generates a report of its findings. Extract references (pdf, url, doi, arxiv) and metadata from a PDF.

• Extract references and metadata from a given PDF.
• Detects pdf, url, arxiv and doi references.
• Checks for valid SSL certificate.
• Find broken hyperlinks (using the -c flag).
• Output as text or JSON (using the -j flag).
• Extract the PDF text (using the --text flag).
• Use as command-line tool or Python package.
• Works with local and online pdfs.

Grab a copy of the code with pip or snap:

pip install linkrot

snap install linkrot

linkrot [pdf-file-or-url]

Run linkrot -h to see the help output: linkrot -h

usage: linkrot [-h] [-d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY] [-c] [-j] [-v] [-t] [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [--version] pdf

Extract metadata and references from a PDF, and optionally download all referenced PDFs.

pdf (Filename or URL of a PDF file)

-h, --help            (Show this help message and exit)  
-d OUTPUT_DIRECTORY,  --download-pdfs OUTPUT_DIRECTORY (Download all referenced PDFs into specified directory)  
-c, --check-links     (Check for broken links)  
-j, --json            (Output infos as JSON (instead of plain text))  
-v, --verbose         (Print all references (instead of only PDFs))  
-t, --text            (Only extract text (no metadata or references))  
-o OUTPUT_FILE,        --output-file OUTPUT_FILE (Output to specified file instead of console)  
--version             (Show program's version number and exit)  

linkrot https://example.com/example.pdf -t

linkrot https://example.com/example.pdf -t -o pdf-text.txt

linkrot https://example.com/example.pdf -c

This program is licensed with an MIT License.