Alice: Hi Bob, I've been thinking about creating a system that integrates different university services into one portal. Do you think it's possible to also include PDF document management within this portal?

Bob: Absolutely! It's quite feasible. We can create an application where users can upload, view, and manage their PDF documents directly from the university portal.

Alice: That sounds great! How do we start? Any particular technology stack in mind?

Bob: Let's use Python with Flask for the backend and HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the frontend. For handling PDFs, we can leverage libraries like PyPDF2 or pdfplumber. Here's a basic setup for the backend:

        # app.py
        from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
        import os
        from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

        app = Flask(__name__)

        @app.route('/upload', methods=['POST'])
        def upload_file():
            if 'file' not in request.files:
                return "No file part", 400
            file = request.files['file']
            if file.filename == '':
                return "No selected file", 400
            if file:
                filename = file.filename
                filepath = os.path.join('uploads', filename)
                file.save(filepath)
                return jsonify({"message": f"File {filename} uploaded successfully."}), 201

        @app.route('/read/', methods=['GET'])
        def read_pdf(filename):
            try:
                filepath = os.path.join('uploads', filename)
                reader = PdfReader(filepath)
                num_pages = len(reader.pages)
                text = ""
                for page_num in range(num_pages):
                    text += reader.pages[page_num].extract_text()
                return jsonify({"text": text}), 200
            except Exception as e:
                return str(e), 500

        if __name__ == '__main__':
            app.run(debug=True)
      

Alice: Wow, that looks simple enough. So, this Flask app allows us to upload PDFs and extract their content. What about the frontend?

Bob: The frontend will be straightforward too. We'll create forms for uploading files and display buttons to interact with these files.

        
        
        
        
          
          
          
        
        
          
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Alice: Excellent! With this setup, students can easily upload and manage their PDF documents via the university portal.

Bob: Exactly. This is just the beginning. You can extend it further by adding features like searching, editing, or even integrating with other systems.