Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. When Claude needs to fill in a PDF form or programmaticall...
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This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see reference.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read forms.md and follow its instructions.
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter # Read a PDF reader = PdfReader("document.pdf") print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}") # Extract text text = "" for page in reader.pages: text += page.extract_text()
from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader writer = PdfWriter() for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf", "doc3.pdf"]: reader = PdfReader(pdf_file) for page in reader.pages: writer.add_page(page) with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output: writer.write(output)
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf") for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages): writer = PdfWriter() writer.add_page(page) with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as output: writer.write(output)
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf") meta = reader.metadata print(f"Title: {meta.title}") print(f"Author: {meta.author}") print(f"Subject: {meta.subject}") print(f"Creator: {meta.creator}")
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf") writer = PdfWriter() page = reader.pages[0] page.rotate(90) # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise writer.add_page(page) with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as output: writer.write(output)
import pdfplumber with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: for page in pdf.pages: text = page.extract_text() print(text)
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages): tables = page.extract_tables() for j, table in enumerate(tables): print(f"Table {j+1} on page {i+1}:") for row in table: print(row)
import pandas as pd with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: all_tables = [] for page in pdf.pages: tables = page.extract_tables() for table in tables: if table: # Check if table is not empty df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0]) all_tables.append(df) # Combine all tables if all_tables: combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True) combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter) width, height = letter # Add text c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!") c.drawString(100, height - 120, "This is a PDF created with reportlab") # Add a line c.line(100, height - 140, 400, height - 140) # Save c.save()
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter) styles = getSampleStyleSheet() story = [] # Add content title = Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title']) story.append(title) story.append(Spacer(1, 12)) body = Paragraph("This is the body of the report. " * 20, styles['Normal']) story.append(body) story.append(PageBreak()) # Page 2 story.append(Paragraph("Page 2", styles['Heading1'])) story.append(Paragraph("Content for page 2", styles['Normal'])) # Build PDF doc.build(story)
# Extract text pdftotext input.pdf output.txt # Extract text preserving layout pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt # Extract specific pages pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt # Pages 1-5
# Merge PDFs qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf # Split pages qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf # Rotate pages qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1 # Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees # Remove password qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf
# Merge pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf # Split pdftk input.pdf burst # Rotate pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf
# Requires: pip install pytesseract pdf2image import pytesseract from pdf2image import convert_from_path # Convert PDF to images images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf') # OCR each page text = "" for i, image in enumerate(images): text += f"Page {i+1}:\n" text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image) text += "\n\n" print(text)
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter # Create watermark (or load existing) watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0] # Apply to all pages reader = PdfReader("document.pdf") writer = PdfWriter() for page in reader.pages: page.merge_page(watermark) writer.add_page(page) with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as output: writer.write(output)
# Using pdfimages (poppler-utils) pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix # This extracts all images as output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc.
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter reader = PdfReader("input.pdf") writer = PdfWriter() for page in reader.pages: writer.add_page(page) # Add password writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword") with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output: writer.write(output)
| Task | Best Tool | Command/Code |
|---|---|---|
| Merge PDFs | pypdf | |
| Split PDFs | pypdf | One page per file |
| Extract text | pdfplumber | |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber | |
| Create PDFs | reportlab | Canvas or Platypus |
| Command line merge | qpdf | |
| OCR scanned PDFs | pytesseract | Convert to image first |
| Fill PDF forms | pdf-lib or pypdf (see forms.md) | See forms.md |
[Real-world examples showing the skill in action]
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