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) ```bash # 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 ```python 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) ```python 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 ```python 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) ```bash # 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) ```python 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 ```python 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 ```python 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 ```python 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 | Library | Use Case | Install | |---------|----------|---------| | PyMuPDF (fitz) | Read, write, merge, split | `pip install pymupdf` | | pdftotext | CLI text extraction | `apt install poppler-utils` | | pdfplumber | Table extraction | `pip install pdfplumber` | | reportlab | Create PDFs programmatically | `pip install reportlab` | | weasyprint | HTML to PDF | `pip install weasyprint` | | pdf2image | PDF to images | `pip install pdf2image` | | PyPDF2 | Merge, split, rotate | `pip install pypdf2` | ## 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