PDF

PDF Processing Skill

You now have expertise in PDF file processing. Follow these instructions based on the task.

Reading PDFs

Using pdftotext (Recommended for text extraction)

# Install if needed
apt-get install -y poppler-utils

# Extract text from PDF
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

# Extract specific pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt

# Extract with layout preservation
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

Using Python PyMuPDF

import fitz  # PyMuPDF

# Open and read PDF
doc = fitz.open("input.pdf")
for page_num, page in enumerate(doc):
    text = page.get_text()
    print(f"--- Page {page_num + 1} ---")
    print(text)

# Extract text from specific pages
page = doc[0]  # First page (0-indexed)
text = page.get_text()

Using pdfplumber (for tables)

import pdfplumber

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

        # Extract tables
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for table in tables:
            for row in table:
                print(row)

Creating PDFs

Using Python reportlab

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter, A4
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.lib.units import inch

# Create a simple PDF
c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)
c.drawString(1*inch, 10*inch, "Hello World")
c.save()

Using Pandoc (from Markdown)

# Install pandoc if needed
apt-get install -y pandoc texlive-xetex

# Convert Markdown to PDF
pandoc input.md -o output.pdf

# With custom template
pandoc input.md -o output.pdf --template=template.tex

Using weasyprint (from HTML)

from weasyprint import HTML

# From HTML string
html_content = "<h1>Hello World</h1><p>This is a PDF.</p>"
HTML(string=html_content).write_pdf("output.pdf")

# From HTML file
HTML("input.html").write_pdf("output.pdf")

Merging PDFs

import fitz

result = fitz.open()
for pdf_file in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]:
    doc = fitz.open(pdf_file)
    result.insert_pdf(doc)
result.save("merged.pdf")

Splitting PDFs

import fitz

doc = fitz.open("input.pdf")

# Extract specific pages
output = fitz.open()
output.insert_pdf(doc, from_page=0, to_page=4)  # Pages 1-5
output.save("pages_1_to_5.pdf")

# Split into individual pages
for i, page in enumerate(doc):
    single_page = fitz.open()
    single_page.insert_pdf(doc, from_page=i, to_page=i)
    single_page.save(f"page_{i+1}.pdf")

Adding Watermarks

import fitz

doc = fitz.open("input.pdf")
for page in doc:
    # Add text watermark
    page.insert_text(
        (100, 100),
        "CONFIDENTIAL",
        fontsize=50,
        color=(0.8, 0.8, 0.8),
        rotate=45
    )
doc.save("watermarked.pdf")

Key Libraries

Best Practices

1. Always check if required libraries are installed before use
2. For large PDFs, process pages in batches to manage memory
3. When extracting text, verify encoding (UTF-8 is recommended)
4. For table extraction, pdfplumber is more reliable than PyMuPDF
5. Close PDF documents after processing to free resources