TypeScript (Node.js)
Extract text, tables, images, and metadata from 90+ file formats and 300+ programming languages including PDF, Office documents, and images. Native NAPI-RS bindings for Node.js with superior performance, async/await support, and TypeScript type definitions.
What This Package Provides
- Document intelligence core — extract text, tables, images, metadata, entities, keywords, and code intelligence from one API.
- Format coverage — PDF, Office, images, HTML/XML, email, archives, notebooks, citations, scientific formats, and plain text.
- OCR choices — Tesseract, PaddleOCR, EasyOCR where supported, VLM OCR through liter-llm, and plugin hooks for custom backends.
- Same engine as every binding — Rust, Python, Node.js, Go, Java, PHP, Ruby, .NET, Elixir, R, WASM, Kotlin Android, Swift, Dart, Zig, and C FFI share the same Rust implementation.
- Node-first TypeScript API — NAPI-RS package with typed options/results and async extraction.
Installation
Package Installation
pnpm add @kreuzberg/node
System Requirements
- Node.js 22+ required (NAPI-RS native bindings)
- Optional: ONNX Runtime version 1.22.x for embeddings support
- Optional: Tesseract OCR for OCR functionality
Platform Support
Pre-built binaries available for:
- macOS (arm64, x64)
- Linux (x64)
- Windows (x64)
Quick Start
Basic Extraction
Extract text, metadata, and structure from any supported document format:
import { extractFileSync } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const config = {
useCache: true,
enableQualityProcessing: true,
};
const result = extractFileSync("document.pdf", null, config);
console.log(result.content);
console.log(`MIME Type: ${result.mimeType}`);
Common Use Cases
Extract with Custom Configuration
Most use cases benefit from configuration to control extraction behavior:
With OCR (for scanned documents):
import { extractFile } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const config = {
ocr: {
backend: "tesseract",
language: "eng+fra",
tesseractConfig: {
psm: 3,
},
},
};
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf", null, config);
console.log(result.content);
Table Extraction
import { extractFileSync } from "kreuzberg";
const result = extractFileSync("document.pdf");
result.tables?.forEach((table) => {
console.log(`Table with ${table.cells?.length ?? 0} rows`);
console.log(table.markdown);
table.cells?.forEach((row) => console.log(row.join(" | ")));
});
Processing Multiple Files
import { batchExtractFilesSync } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const files = ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.docx", "doc3.pptx"];
const results = batchExtractFilesSync(files);
results.forEach((result, i) => {
console.log(`File ${i + 1}: ${result.content.length} characters`);
});
Async Processing
For non-blocking document processing:
import { extractFile } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf");
console.log(result.content);
Configuration Discovery
import { ExtractionConfig, extractFile } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const config = ExtractionConfig.discover();
if (config) {
console.log("Found configuration file");
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf", null, config);
console.log(result.content);
} else {
console.log("No configuration file found, using defaults");
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf");
console.log(result.content);
}
Worker Thread Pool
import {
createWorkerPool,
extractFileInWorker,
batchExtractFilesInWorker,
closeWorkerPool,
} from "@kreuzberg/node";
// Create a pool with 4 worker threads
const pool = createWorkerPool(4);
try {
// Extract single file in worker
const result = await extractFileInWorker(pool, "document.pdf", null, {
useCache: true,
});
console.log(result.content);
// Extract multiple files concurrently
const files = ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.docx", "doc3.xlsx"];
const results = await batchExtractFilesInWorker(pool, files, {
useCache: true,
});
results.forEach((result, i) => {
console.log(`File ${i + 1}: ${result.content.length} characters`);
});
} finally {
// Always close the pool when done
await closeWorkerPool(pool);
}
Performance Benefits:
- Parallel Processing: Multiple documents extracted simultaneously
- CPU Utilization: Maximizes multi-core CPU usage for large batches
- Queue Management: Automatically distributes work across available workers
- Resource Control: Prevents thread exhaustion with configurable pool size
Best Practices:
- Use worker pools for batches of 10+ documents
- Set pool size to number of CPU cores (default behavior)
- Always close pools with
closeWorkerPool()to prevent resource leaks - Reuse pools across multiple batch operations for efficiency
Next Steps
- Installation Guide - Platform-specific setup
- API Documentation - Complete API reference
- Examples & Guides - Full code examples and usage guides
- Configuration Guide - Advanced configuration options
NAPI-RS Implementation Details
Native Performance
This binding uses NAPI-RS to provide native Node.js bindings with:
- Zero-copy data transfer between JavaScript and Rust layers
- Native thread pool for concurrent document processing
- Direct memory management for efficient large document handling
- Binary-compatible pre-built native modules across platforms
Threading Model
- Single documents are processed synchronously or asynchronously in a dedicated thread
- Batch operations distribute work across available CPU cores
- Thread count is configurable but defaults to system CPU count
- Long-running extractions block the event loop unless using async APIs
Memory Management
- Large documents (> 100 MB) are streamed to avoid loading entirely into memory
- Temporary files are created in system temp directory for extraction
- Memory is automatically released after extraction completion
- ONNX models are cached in memory for repeated embeddings operations
Features
Supported File Formats (90+)
90+ file formats across 8 major categories with intelligent format detection and comprehensive metadata extraction.
Office Documents
| Category | Formats | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| Word Processing | .docx, .docm, .dotx, .dotm, .dot, .odt |
Full text, tables, images, metadata, styles |
| Spreadsheets | .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xls, .xla, .xlam, .xltm, .xltx, .xlt, .ods |
Sheet data, formulas, cell metadata, charts |
| Presentations | .pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, .potx, .potm, .pot, .ppt |
Slides, speaker notes, images, metadata |
.pdf |
Text, tables, images, metadata, OCR support | |
| eBooks | .epub, .fb2 |
Chapters, metadata, embedded resources |
| Database | .dbf |
Table data extraction, field type support |
| Hangul | .hwp, .hwpx |
Korean document format, text extraction |
Images (OCR-Enabled)
| Category | Formats | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Raster | .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp, .bmp, .tiff, .tif |
OCR, table detection, EXIF metadata, dimensions, color space |
| Advanced | .jp2, .jpx, .jpm, .mj2, .jbig2, .jb2, .pnm, .pbm, .pgm, .ppm |
OCR via hayro-jpeg2000 (pure Rust decoder), JBIG2 support, table detection, format-specific metadata |
| Vector | .svg |
DOM parsing, embedded text, graphics metadata |
Web & Data
| Category | Formats | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Markup | .html, .htm, .xhtml, .xml, .svg |
DOM parsing, metadata (Open Graph, Twitter Card), link extraction |
| Structured Data | .json, .yaml, .yml, .toml, .csv, .tsv |
Schema detection, nested structures, validation |
| Text & Markdown | .txt, .md, .markdown, .djot, .rst, .org, .rtf |
CommonMark, GFM, Djot, reStructuredText, Org Mode |
Email & Archives
| Category | Formats | Features |
|---|---|---|
.eml, .msg |
Headers, body (HTML/plain), attachments, threading | |
| Archives | .zip, .tar, .tgz, .gz, .7z |
File listing, nested archives, metadata |
Academic & Scientific
| Category | Formats | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Citations | .bib, .biblatex, .ris, .nbib, .enw, .csl |
Structured parsing: RIS (structured), PubMed/MEDLINE, EndNote XML (structured), BibTeX, CSL JSON |
| Scientific | .tex, .latex, .typst, .jats, .ipynb, .docbook |
LaTeX, Jupyter notebooks, PubMed JATS |
| Documentation | .opml, .pod, .mdoc, .troff |
Technical documentation formats |
Code Intelligence (300+ Languages)
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Structure Extraction | Functions, classes, methods, structs, interfaces, enums |
| Import/Export Analysis | Module dependencies, re-exports, wildcard imports |
| Symbol Extraction | Variables, constants, type aliases, properties |
| Docstring Parsing | Google, NumPy, Sphinx, JSDoc, RustDoc, and 10+ formats |
| Diagnostics | Parse errors with line/column positions |
| Syntax-Aware Chunking | Split code by semantic boundaries, not arbitrary byte offsets |
Powered by tree-sitter-language-pack — documentation.
Key Capabilities
- Text Extraction - Extract all text content with position and formatting information
- Metadata Extraction - Retrieve document properties, creation date, author, etc.
- Table Extraction - Parse tables with structure and cell content preservation
- Image Extraction - Extract embedded images and render page previews
- OCR Support - Integrate multiple OCR backends for scanned documents
- Async/Await - Non-blocking document processing with concurrent operations
- Plugin System - Extensible post-processing for custom text transformation
- Embeddings - Generate vector embeddings using ONNX Runtime models
- Batch Processing - Efficiently process multiple documents in parallel
- Memory Efficient - Stream large files without loading entirely into memory
- Language Detection - Detect and support multiple languages in documents
- Code Intelligence - Extract structure, imports, exports, symbols, and docstrings from 300+ programming languages via tree-sitter
- Configuration - Fine-grained control over extraction behavior
Performance Characteristics
| Format | Speed | Memory | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDF (text) | 10-100 MB/s | ~50MB per doc | Fastest extraction |
| Office docs | 20-200 MB/s | ~100MB per doc | DOCX, XLSX, PPTX |
| Images (OCR) | 1-5 MB/s | Variable | Depends on OCR backend |
| Archives | 5-50 MB/s | ~200MB per doc | ZIP, TAR, etc. |
| Web formats | 50-200 MB/s | Streaming | HTML, XML, JSON |
OCR Support
Kreuzberg supports multiple OCR backends for extracting text from scanned documents and images:
-
Tesseract
-
Paddleocr
OCR Configuration Example
import { extractFile } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const config = {
ocr: {
backend: "tesseract",
language: "eng+fra",
tesseractConfig: {
psm: 3,
},
},
};
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf", null, config);
console.log(result.content);
Async Support
This binding provides full async/await support for non-blocking document processing:
import { extractFile } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const result = await extractFile("document.pdf");
console.log(result.content);
Plugin System
Kreuzberg supports extensible post-processing plugins for custom text transformation and filtering.
For detailed plugin documentation, visit Plugin System Guide.
Embeddings Support
Generate vector embeddings for extracted text using the built-in ONNX Runtime support. Requires ONNX Runtime installation.
Batch Processing
Process multiple documents efficiently:
import { batchExtractFilesSync } from "@kreuzberg/node";
const files = ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.docx", "doc3.pptx"];
const results = batchExtractFilesSync(files);
results.forEach((result, i) => {
console.log(`File ${i + 1}: ${result.content.length} characters`);
});
Configuration
For advanced configuration options including language detection, table extraction, OCR settings, and more:
Documentation
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! See Contributing Guide.
Part of Kreuzberg.dev
- Kreuzberg Cloud — managed extraction API with SDKs, dashboards, and observability.
- kreuzcrawl — web crawling and scraping with HTML→Markdown and headless-Chrome fallback.
- html-to-markdown — fast, lossless HTML→Markdown engine.
- liter-llm — universal LLM API client with native bindings for 14 languages and 143 providers.
- tree-sitter-language-pack — tree-sitter grammars and code-intelligence primitives.
- alef — the polyglot binding generator that produces this README and all per-language bindings.
- Discord — community, roadmap, announcements.
License
Elastic-2.0 License — see LICENSE for details.
Support
- Discord Community: Join our Discord
- GitHub Issues: Report bugs
- Discussions: Ask questions