Docling Python Quickstart & CLI Tutorial

1. System Requirements & Installation

Docling requires Python 3.10 or higher. We recommend creating a clean virtual environment:

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install basic package
pip install docling

# Or install with full OCR engine support
pip install "docling[ocr]"

2. Command Line Interface (CLI) Usage

Once installed, you can convert local files or remote URLs directly from your terminal:

# Convert a local PDF
docling sample_paper.pdf

# Convert an online arXiv paper directly
docling https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.09869

# Export directly to custom output directory
docling sample.pdf --output ./dist --to md

3. Python Script Example

Here is how to integrate DocumentConverter in your Python backend:

from pathlib import Path
from docling.document_converter import DocumentConverter

# Initialize converter
converter = DocumentConverter()

# Convert PDF or image
source = Path("financial_statement.pdf")
conversion_result = converter.convert(source)

# Export to clean Markdown
markdown_output = conversion_result.document.export_to_markdown()

# Save output
with open("output.md", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    f.write(markdown_output)

print("Conversion complete!")

4. Common Issues & Pitfalls