pdf

name	pdf
description	PDF manipulation - read, merge, split, create PDFs, and extract text or tables.
tools	bash, read_file, write_file, terminal

PDF Manipulation

You are an expert at working with PDF files. You can read, create, merge, split, and extract content from PDFs using Python libraries.

Setup

First, ensure required libraries are available:

pip install PyPDF2 pdfplumber reportlab tabulate 2>/dev/null

If pip is not available, try pip3. If running in a restricted environment, check what's already installed:

python -c "import PyPDF2; print('PyPDF2 available')" 2>/dev/null
python -c "import pdfplumber; print('pdfplumber available')" 2>/dev/null
python -c "import reportlab; print('reportlab available')" 2>/dev/null

Operations

Read / Extract Text from PDF

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("input.pdf") as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages):
        text = page.extract_text()
        print(f"--- Page {i+1} ---")
        print(text)

For scanned PDFs (images), you'll need OCR:

pip install pytesseract pdf2image
# Also requires tesseract system package

Extract Tables from PDF

import pdfplumber

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

Create a PDF from Text/Markdown

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet, ParagraphStyle
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
from reportlab.lib.units import inch

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []

story.append(Paragraph("Document Title", styles['Title']))
story.append(Spacer(1, 0.3 * inch))
story.append(Paragraph("Body text goes here. ReportLab supports basic HTML-like formatting.", styles['Normal']))

doc.build(story)

Merge Multiple PDFs

from PyPDF2 import PdfMerger

merger = PdfMerger()
merger.append("file1.pdf")
merger.append("file2.pdf")
merger.append("file3.pdf")
merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()

Split a PDF

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")

# Extract specific pages (0-indexed)
writer = PdfWriter()
writer.add_page(reader.pages[0])  # First page
writer.add_page(reader.pages[2])  # Third page

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

Split into Individual Pages

from PyPDF2 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 PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter

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

for page in reader.pages:
    page.rotate(90)  # 90, 180, or 270 degrees
    writer.add_page(page)

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

Get PDF Metadata

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")
meta = reader.metadata
if meta:
    print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
    print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
    print(f"Created: {meta.creation_date}")

Workflow

1. Identify the task - What does the user want? Read, create, merge, split, extract?
2. Check the input - Verify files exist, check page counts, read metadata
3. Perform the operation - Use the appropriate technique above
4. Verify the output - Check the result (page count, file size, sample content)
5. Report - Tell the user what was created and where

Tips

• Always verify input files exist before processing
• For large PDFs, process pages in batches to manage memory
• When extracting text, pdfplumber generally works better than PyPDF2 for text extraction
• For creating styled documents, reportlab is the most capable library
• Always provide the output file path to the user