This guide covers essential PDF operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features and JavaScript libraries, see reference.md. For PDF form completion, see forms.md.
Quick Reference
| Task | Tool | Command/Method |
|---|---|---|
| Read text | pdfplumber | page.extract_text() |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber | page.extract_tables() |
| Merge PDFs | pypdf | PdfMerger().append() |
| Split pages | pypdf | PdfWriter().add_page() |
| Create PDF | reportlab | canvas.Canvas() |
| Text extraction (CLI) | pdftotext | pdftotext -layout file.pdf |
| Merge/split (CLI) | qpdf | qpdf --pages |
| OCR scanned docs | pytesseract | image_to_string() |
Reading PDFs
Extract Text with pdfplumber
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
text = page.extract_text()
print(text)
Extract Tables to Excel
import pdfplumber
import pandas as pd
with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf:
tables = []
for page in pdf.pages:
page_tables = page.extract_tables()
for table in page_tables:
df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
tables.append(df)
# Export to Excel
with pd.ExcelWriter("output.xlsx") as writer:
for i, df in enumerate(tables):
df.to_excel(writer, sheet_name=f"Table_{i+1}", index=False)
Get PDF Metadata
from pypdf import PdfReader
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
info = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {info.title}")
print(f"Author: {info.author}")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")
Creating PDFs
Simple PDF with reportlab
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)
c.drawString(100, 750, "Hello, World!")
c.save()
Multi-page Document with Platypus
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []
story.append(Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Spacer(1, 12))
story.append(Paragraph("This is the body text.", styles['Normal']))
doc.build(story)
Merging and Splitting
Merge Multiple PDFs
from pypdf import PdfMerger
merger = PdfMerger()
merger.append("file1.pdf")
merger.append("file2.pdf")
merger.append("file3.pdf")
merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()
Split PDF into Pages
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")
Extract Page Range
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
# Extract pages 5-10 (0-indexed)
for page_num in range(4, 10):
writer.add_page(reader.pages[page_num])
writer.write("extracted.pdf")
Command-Line Tools
pdftotext (from poppler-utils)
# Extract text with layout preservation
pdftotext -layout document.pdf output.txt
# Extract specific pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 document.pdf output.txt
# Output to stdout
pdftotext document.pdf -
qpdf
# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf
# Extract pages 1-5
qpdf document.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- extracted.pdf
# Rotate pages
qpdf document.pdf --rotate=90:1-5 rotated.pdf
# Remove password
qpdf --password=secret --decrypt protected.pdf unlocked.pdf
pdftk (alternative)
# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf
# Split
pdftk document.pdf burst output page_%d.pdf
# Rotate
pdftk document.pdf cat 1-5east output rotated.pdf
Advanced Operations
OCR Scanned Documents
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
import pytesseract
# Convert PDF pages to images
images = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf", dpi=300)
# OCR each page
text = ""
for image in images:
text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
print(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
# Using pdfimages (from poppler-utils)
pdfimages -png document.pdf images/
Password Protection
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
writer.add_page(page)
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")
writer.write("protected.pdf")
Dependencies
Install required packages:
# Python libraries
pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab pdf2image pytesseract pandas openpyxl
# System tools (macOS)
brew install poppler tesseract qpdf
# System tools (Ubuntu/Debian)
apt-get install poppler-utils tesseract-ocr qpdf