PDF Processing

Extract, transform, merge, split, and generate PDFs with structured outputs.

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

example.py

Python Libraries

pypdf - Basic Operations

Merge PDFs

example.py

Split PDF

example.py

Extract Metadata

example.py

Rotate Pages

example.py

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

Extract Text with Layout

example.py

Extract Tables

example.py

Advanced Table Extraction

example.py

reportlab - Create PDFs

Basic PDF Creation

example.py

Create PDF with Multiple Pages

example.py

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

terminal

qpdf

terminal

pdftk (if available)

terminal

Common Tasks

Extract Text from Scanned PDFs

example.py

Add Watermark

example.py

Extract Images

terminal

Password Protection

example.py

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