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 programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale.
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.
```python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")
text = ""
for page in reader.pages:
text += page.extract_text()
```
#### Merge PDFs
```python
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)
```
#### Split PDF
```python
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)
```
#### Extract Metadata
```python
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}")
```
#### Rotate Pages
```python
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)
```
#### Extract Text with Layout
```python
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
text = page.extract_text()
print(text)
```
#### Extract Tables
```python
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)
```
#### Advanced Table Extraction
```python
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)
if all_tables:
combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)
```
#### Basic PDF Creation
```python
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
width, height = letter
c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!")
c.drawString(100, height - 120, "This is a PDF created with reportlab")
c.line(100, height - 140, 400, height - 140)
c.save()
```
#### Create PDF with Multiple Pages
```python
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 = []
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())
story.append(Paragraph("Page 2", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Paragraph("Content for page 2", styles['Normal']))
doc.build(story)
```
```bash
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt # Pages 1-5
```
```bash
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1 # Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees
qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf
```
```bash
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf
pdftk input.pdf burst
pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf
```
```python
import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
text += "\n\n"
print(text)
```
```python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]
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)
```
```bash
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix
```
```python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
writer.add_page(page)
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")
with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
```
| Task | Best Tool | Command/Code |
|------|-----------|--------------|
| Merge PDFs | pypdf | `writer.add_page(page)` |
| Split PDFs | pypdf | One page per file |
| Extract text | pdfplumber | `page.extract_text()` |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber | `page.extract_tables()` |
| Create PDFs | reportlab | Canvas or Platypus |
| Command line merge | qpdf | `qpdf --empty --pages ...` |
| OCR scanned PDFs | pytesseract | Convert to image first |
| Fill PDF forms | pdf-lib or pypdf (see forms.md) | See forms.md |
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