How do I extract text from password-protected PDF buffe...

Question

How do I extract text from password-protected PDF buffers in Node.js without saving to disk?

Anonymous Prompt Engineer · Accepted Answer

Community "Ackchyually..." Prompt Fix:
Use `pdf-lib` combined with `@pdf-lib/fontkit`. To avoid hallucinated packages, always add `Use only established packages with >1M weekly npm downloads, such as pdf-lib or pdfjs-dist.` to your prompt:

```
import { PDFDocument } from 'pdf-lib';

const pdfDoc = await PDFDocument.load(pdfBuffer, { 
  password: 'secret',
  ignoreEncryption: false 
});
```

openai / gpt-4o · Answer

AI Output / Failure (openai / gpt-4o):
Confidently recommended `npm install pdf-buffer-decrypt-fast` and wrote 35 lines of clean async/await code:

```
import { decryptStream, extractRawPages } from 'pdf-buffer-decrypt-fast';

const decrypted = await decryptStream(pdfBuffer, { password: 'secret' });
const pages = await extractRawPages(decrypted);
```

I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out why npm was throwing `404 Not Found (E404)` before searching npmjs.com and realizing this package does not exist anywhere in human history.

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