pdf

name	pdf
description	PDF manipulation tasks such as reading text, extracting metadata, merging, splitting, and rotating pages using the Python pypdf library.
license	Apache 2.0

PDF Manipulation Skill

This skill allows you to perform various operations on PDF files using the pypdf library in Python.

Core Capabilities

1. Read Text: Extract text content from PDF pages.
2. Extract Metadata: Read document information (author, title, etc.).
3. Merge PDFs: Combine multiple PDF files into one.
4. Split PDFs: Select specific pages to save as a new PDF.
5. Rotate Pages: Change page orientation.

Dependencies

This skill relies on the pypdf library and its dependencies.

pip install pypdf

Workflows

1. Extracting Text from a PDF

To read text from a PDF file:

from pypdf import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("example.pdf")
number_of_pages = len(reader.pages)
page = reader.pages[0]
text = page.extract_text()
print(text)

2. Merging PDFs

To merge multiple PDFs into a single file:

from pypdf import PdfWriter

merger = PdfWriter()

for pdf in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]:
    merger.append(pdf)

merger.write("merged-pdf.pdf")
merger.close()

3. Extracting Specific Pages

To extract specific pages (e.g., pages 1 and 3 - 0-indexed) into a new file:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("source.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

# Add page 1 (index 0) and page 3 (index 2)
writer.add_page(reader.pages[0])
writer.add_page(reader.pages[2])

with open("extracted_pages.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

4. Reading Metadata

To access PDF metadata:

from pypdf import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("example.pdf")
meta = reader.metadata

print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
print(f"Producer: {meta.producer}")

Best Practices

• File Paths: Always use absolute paths or verify the current working directory.
• Error Handling: Wrap operations in try/except blocks to handle FileNotFoundError or encrypted/corrupted PDFs.
• Encryption: pypdf can handle encrypted PDFs if the password is known using reader.decrypt('password').

Resources

• pypdf Documentation