pdf

name	pdf
description	Use for extracting, merging, splitting, OCR, and filling PDFs.

PDF Processing

• Quick Start
• Common Operations
  • Merge PDFs
  • Split PDF
  • Rotate Pages
  • Extract Text
  • Extract Tables
  • Create PDFs
  • OCR Scanned PDFs
• Gotchas
• Reusable Scripts
• Library Reference
• Command-Line Tools

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Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")

# Extract text
text = "".join(page.extract_text() for page in reader.pages)

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Common Operations

Merge PDFs

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf"]:
    for page in PdfReader(pdf_file).pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

Split PDF

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

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 f:
        writer.write(f)

Rotate Pages

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page.rotate(90))   # clockwise
with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

Extract Text

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    text = "\n".join(page.extract_text() or "" for page in pdf.pages)

Extract Tables

import pdfplumber

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

Create PDFs

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

c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.drawString(100, 700, "Hello World!")
c.save()

OCR Scanned PDFs

from pdf2image import convert_from_path
import pytesseract

images = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")
text = "\n".join(pytesseract.image_to_string(img) for img in images)

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Gotchas

Issue	Explanation	Workaround
Scanned PDFs contain no text	extract_text() returns empty or garbage for image-based pages.	Run OCR first (see OCR Scanned PDFs).
Tables without visible borders	pdfplumber.extract_tables() relies on ruling lines; borderless tables may be missed or parsed as a single column.	Set table_settings={"vertical_strategy": "text", "horizontal_strategy": "text"} or switch to layout-based extraction.
reportlab origin is bottom-left	Coordinates (0, 0) are at the bottom-left corner of the page, unlike most image APIs where (0, 0) is top-left.	Use page_height - y to convert from top-left conventions, or use c.translate() and draw in your own coordinate space.
Rotation mutates in place	page.rotate() modifies the page object and returns it; do not reuse the original writer without care.	Re-read the source PDF if you need both original and rotated copies.

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Reusable Scripts

The following standalone CLI wrappers live in scripts/ so you do not rebuild logic each time. Copy or adapt them directly. Each script is self-contained and prints usage when called with no arguments.

Available scripts:

• scripts/pdf_merge.py – merge multiple PDFs
• scripts/pdf_split.py – split into one file per page
• scripts/pdf_text.py – extract plain text
• scripts/pdf_rotate.py – rotate all pages

scripts/pdf_merge.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Merge multiple PDFs into one. Usage: pdf_merge.py out.pdf a.pdf b.pdf ..."""
import sys
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

if len(sys.argv) < 3:
    sys.exit("Usage: pdf_merge.py <output.pdf> <input1.pdf> [input2.pdf] ...")

writer = PdfWriter()
for path in sys.argv[2:]:
    for page in PdfReader(path).pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
with open(sys.argv[1], "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)
print(f"Merged {len(sys.argv) - 2} files into {sys.argv[1]}")

scripts/pdf_split.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Split a PDF into one file per page. Usage: pdf_split.py input.pdf [prefix]"""
import sys
from pathlib import Path
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    sys.exit("Usage: pdf_split.py <input.pdf> [output_prefix]")

prefix = sys.argv[2] if len(sys.argv) > 2 else "page"
reader = PdfReader(sys.argv[1])
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages, start=1):
    writer = PdfWriter()
    writer.add_page(page)
    out = f"{prefix}_{i:03d}.pdf"
    with open(out, "wb") as f:
        writer.write(f)
    print(out)

scripts/pdf_text.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Extract plain text from a PDF. Usage: pdf_text.py input.pdf > out.txt"""
import sys
import pdfplumber

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    sys.exit("Usage: pdf_text.py <input.pdf>")

with pdfplumber.open(sys.argv[1]) as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        if text:
            print(text)

scripts/pdf_rotate.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Rotate all pages of a PDF. Usage: pdf_rotate.py input.pdf 90 out.pdf"""
import sys
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

if len(sys.argv) != 4:
    sys.exit("Usage: pdf_rotate.py <input.pdf> <degrees> <output.pdf>")

degrees = int(sys.argv[2])
reader = PdfReader(sys.argv[1])
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page.rotate(degrees))
with open(sys.argv[3], "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)
print(f"Rotated {len(reader.pages)} pages by {degrees} degrees -> {sys.argv[3]}")

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Library Reference

Library	Best For	Avoid When	Key Dependency
pypdf	Merging, splitting, rotating, light metadata editing	Complex layout extraction, fine-grained text positioning	Pure Python
pdfplumber	Text and table extraction with bounding-box info	Creating new PDFs, heavy document assembly	pdfminer.six
PyMuPDF (fitz)	Fast rendering, precise text extraction, annotations, redaction	Requiring a pure-Python dependency chain (needs compiled binary)	Compiled C lib
reportlab	Generating new PDFs programmatically	Editing existing PDFs	Pure Python

Decision Flow

1. Need to merge / split / rotate / stamp? -> pypdf
2. Need to extract text or tables from existing PDFs? -> pdfplumber
3. Need speed, image rendering, or annotation editing? -> PyMuPDF
4. Need to create a brand-new PDF from scratch? -> reportlab

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Command-Line Tools

# Extract text preserving layout
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

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

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Quick Reference

Task	Tool	Key Function
Merge/Split/Rotate	pypdf	writer.add_page()
Extract text	pdfplumber	page.extract_text()
Extract tables	pdfplumber	page.extract_tables()
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas
OCR	pytesseract + pdf2image	image_to_string()