PDF Processing Skill

Overview

This skill enables comprehensive PDF operations through Python libraries and command-line tools. Use it for reading, creating, modifying, and analyzing PDF documents.

Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
for page in reader.pages:
    text = page.extract_text()
    print(text)

Python Libraries

pypdf - Core PDF Operations

Merging PDFs:

from pypdf import PdfMerger

merger = PdfMerger()
merger.append("file1.pdf")
merger.append("file2.pdf")
merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()

Splitting PDFs:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    writer = PdfWriter()
    writer.add_page(page)
    writer.write(f"page_{i+1}.pdf")

Extracting Metadata:

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
info = reader.metadata
print(f"Author: {info.author}")
print(f"Title: {info.title}")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")

pdfplumber - Advanced Text Extraction

Text with Layout Preservation:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        print(text)

Table Extraction:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    page = pdf.pages[0]
    tables = page.extract_tables()
    for table in tables:
        for row in table:
            print(row)

reportlab - Creating PDFs

Create PDF from Scratch:

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.drawString(100, 750, "Hello, World!")
c.showPage()
c.save()

Multi-page Documents:

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []

story.append(Paragraph("Title", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Paragraph("Body text here.", styles['Normal']))

doc.build(story)

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (Poppler)

pdftotext document.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -layout document.pdf output.txt  # Preserve layout

qpdf

# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

# Split pages
qpdf document.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- first_five.pdf

# Decrypt
qpdf --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf

pdftk

# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

# Split
pdftk document.pdf burst output page_%02d.pdf

# Rotate
pdftk document.pdf cat 1-endeast output rotated.pdf

Common Tasks

OCR for Scanned Documents

import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

images = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")
for i, image in enumerate(images):
    text = pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
    print(f"Page {i+1}:\n{text}")

Add Watermark

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark.pages[0])
    writer.add_page(page)

writer.write("watermarked.pdf")

Extract Images

from pypdf import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
for page_num, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    for img_num, image in enumerate(page.images):
        with open(f"image_{page_num}_{img_num}.png", "wb") as f:
            f.write(image.data)

Password Protection

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)

writer.encrypt("user_password", "owner_password")
writer.write("protected.pdf")

Quick Reference

Dependencies

pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab pytesseract pdf2image

System tools:

• Poppler (pdftotext, pdftoppm)
• qpdf
• pdftk
• Tesseract OCR

Version History

• 1.0.0 (2024-10-15): Initial release with pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, CLI tools