Apply — 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 o
Apply — 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 o
[{"name":"code_or_task","type":"string","description":"Code snippet, script, or task description to process","required":true}]
output_schema
[{"name":"result","type":"string","description":"Primary output from pdf"}]
PDF Processing Guide
Overview
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.
Quick Start
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()
Python Libraries
pypdf - Basic Operations
Merge PDFs
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)
withopen("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Split PDF
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page inenumerate(reader.pages):
writer = PdfWriter()
writer.add_page(page)
withopen(f"page_{i+1}.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)
Extract Tables
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for i, page inenumerate(pdf.pages):
tables = page.extract_tables()
for j, table inenumerate(tables):
print(f"Table {j+1} on page {i+1}:")
for row in table:
print(row)
Advanced Table Extraction
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 tablesif all_tables:
combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)
reportlab - Create PDFs
Basic PDF Creation
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()
Create PDF with Multiple Pages
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)
Command-Line Tools
pdftotext (poppler-utils)
# 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
# Requires: pip install pytesseract pdf2imageimport pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
# Convert PDF to images
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')
# OCR each page
text = ""for i, image inenumerate(images):
text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
text += "\n\n"print(text)
Add Watermark
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)
withopen("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Extract Images
# Using pdfimages (poppler-utils)
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix
# This extracts all images as output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc.
Password Protection
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")
withopen("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Quick Reference
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
Next Steps
For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see reference.md
For JavaScript libraries (pdf-lib), see reference.md
If you need to fill out a PDF form, follow the instructions in forms.md
For troubleshooting guides, see reference.md
Why This Skill Exists
Apply — 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 o
When to Use
Use this skill when the task requires pdf capabilities.
What If Fails
If this skill fails to produce the expected output: (1) verify input completeness, (2) retry with more specific context, (3) fall back to the parent workflow without this skill.
