---
id: tika
version: "3.3.2"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# tika — Apache Tika Python library

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 532.6K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Tika-python is a Python wrapper around Apache Tika that makes document parsing and metadata extraction available through a REST server interface. It handles text extraction, MIME type detection, language identification, and translation for a wide variety of document formats. The library manages a Tika REST server running in the background, so you interact with it as a Python library rather than managing a separate service.

The package provides multiple interfaces: a parser for extracting text and metadata, a detector for MIME type classification, a language detector, a translator, and a config interface to inspect available parsers and detectors. It supports both file paths and in-memory buffers, optional gzip compression, and can output content as plain text or XHTML. For disconnected environments, you can point to a local Tika server JAR file via environment variables.

Use it for:

- Extract text and metadata from PDFs, Word documents, and other formats for indexing or archival systems.
- Automatically detect MIME types of uploaded files to validate content before processing.
- Identify the language of document content to route to appropriate downstream processing pipelines.
- Translate extracted text from one language to another as part of a document processing workflow.
- Inspect Tika server configuration to understand which parsers and detectors are available in your deployment.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Tika-python provides Python access to Apache Tika's document parsing, metadata extraction, MIME type detection, and language identification through a REST server interface.

Yes, if you need to extract text and metadata from diverse document formats in Python and can meet the Java 11+ requirement. The library is actively maintained, has low install friction, carries a permissive license, and no known vulnerabilities. It is well-suited for document processing pipelines, search indexing, and content analysis. Not suitable if you cannot run Java or need to work entirely offline without pre-staging a Tika server JAR.

## Install

pip install tika
uv add tika
poetry add tika

## Installing tika

Before you install: Low install friction with just two runtime dependencies (beautifulsoup4, requests). Active maintenance with a recent release and steady commit history. Requires Java 11+ on the system to run the Tika REST server in the background.

License in practice: Apache-2.0 is permissive; you can use this freely in commercial and open-source projects with minimal restrictions, provided you include a copy of the license.

Quickstart:

pip install tika

from tika import parser
parsed = parser.from_file('/path/to/file')
print(parsed["metadata"])
print(parsed["content"])

Java 11+ must be installed on your system; tika-python starts the Tika REST server as a background process. In airgap environments, you must manually download tika-server.jar and set TIKA_SERVER_JAR environment variable.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package handles all document formats that Apache Tika supports (fact sheet does not enumerate supported file types).
- Performance characteristics when processing large files or high-volume document batches.
- Stability and resource usage of the background Tika server process across different operating systems.

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 532.6K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

document text extraction python, pdf metadata extraction, mime type detection, apache tika python, language detection documents, document parser library, content extraction from files, document-parsing, metadata-extraction, language-detection

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