title: Extract / Identify Tables from PDF python
body: <p>Are there any open source libraries that support table identification &amp; extraction?</p>
  
  <p>By this I mean: </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Identify a table structure exists</li>
  <li>Classify the table from its contents</li>
  <li>Extract data from the table in a useful output format e.g. JSON / CSV etc.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I have looked through similar questions on this topic and found the following:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pdfminer/">PDFMiner</a> which addresses problem 3, but it seems the user is required to specify to PDFMiner where a table structure exists for each table (correct me if I'm wrong)</li>
  <li><a href="https://github.com/ashima/pdf-table-extract">pdf-table-extract</a> which attempts to address problem 1 but according to the <a href="https://github.com/ashima/pdf-table-extract/blob/master/TODO.md">To-Do</a> list, cannot currently identify tables that are separated by whitespace. This is a problem as all tables in my PDFs are separated by whitespace!</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Currently, I am thinking that I would have to spend a lot of time developing a Machine Learning solution to identify table structures from PDFs. Therefore, any alternative approaches would be more than welcome!</p>