Using the pdf_data function from the pdftools package efficiently

The end goal is to use the pdftools package to efficiently move through a thousand pages of pdf documents to consistently, and safely, produce a useable dataframe/tibble. I have attempted to use the tabulizer package, and pdf_text functions, but the results were inconsistent. Therefore, started working through the pdf_data() function, which I prefer.

For those unfamiliar with the pdf_data function, it converts a pdf page into a coordinate grid, with the 0,0 coordinate being in the upper-left corner of the page. Therefore, by arranging the x,y coordinates, then pivoting the document into a wide format, all of the information is displayed as it would on the page, only with NAs for whitespaces

Here is a simple example using the familiar mtcars dataset.

library(pdftools)
library(tidyverse)
library(janitor)

pdf_file <- "https://github.com/ropensci/tabulizer/raw/master/inst/examples/data.pdf"

mtcars_pdf_df <- pdf_data(pdf_file)[[1]]

mtcars_pdf_df%>%
  arrange(x, y)%>%
  pivot_wider(id_cols = y, names_from = x, values_from = text)%>%
  unite(col = Car_type, `154`:`215`, sep = "", remove = TRUE,  na.rm = TRUE)%>%
  arrange(y)%>%
  rename("Page Number" = `303`)%>%
  unite(col =  mpg, `253`:`254`, sep = "", remove = TRUE, na.rm = TRUE)%>%
  unite(col = cyl, `283` : `291` , sep = "", remove = TRUE, na.rm = TRUE)%>%
  unite(col = disp, `308` : `313`, sep = "", remove = TRUE, na.rm = TRUE)

It would be nice to not use a dozen or so unite functions in order to rename the various columns. I used the janitor package row_to_names() function at one point to convert row 1 to column names, which worked well but maybe someone has a better thought?

The central problem; removing the NAs from the dataset through uniting multiple columns, or shifting columns over so that NAs are filled by adjacent columns.

I'm trying to make this efficient. Possible using the purrr package? any help with making this process more efficient would be very appreciated.

The only information I had on the pdf_data() function going into this is from here... https://ropensci.org/technotes/2018/12/14/pdftools-20/ Any additional resources would also be greatly appreciated (apart from the pdftools package help documentation/literature).

Thanks everyone! I hope this also helps others use the pdf_data() too :)