PDF Manipulation Skill
Comprehensive guide for working with PDF files in Python, covering extraction, manipulation, creation, and advanced operations using progressive disclosure for efficiency.
Core Capabilities
Extract and manipulate PDF content:
- Extract text with layout preservation
- Extract tables and parse structured data
- Fill PDF forms programmatically
- Merge multiple PDFs into a single document
- Split PDFs by pages or ranges
- Create PDFs from scratch with text, images, and graphics
- Add watermarks and annotations
- Extract and modify metadata (author, title, keywords)
- Add password protection and encryption
- Perform OCR on scanned documents
- Convert images to PDF
- Compress and optimize PDF files
- Extract images from PDFs
- Rotate and reorder pages
Quick Start
Install required libraries:
pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab PyMuPDF pdf2image pytesseract pillow
For detailed installation instructions including system dependencies, see:
Python Libraries Overview
pypdf: Basic operations (merge, split, rotate, metadata) pdfplumber: Advanced text/table extraction with layout awareness reportlab: Create PDFs from scratch (reports, invoices, documents) PyMuPDF (fitz): Advanced manipulation, annotations, compression pdf2image: Convert PDF pages to images (requires poppler) pytesseract: OCR for scanned documents (requires tesseract)
Text Extraction Workflow
Basic Extraction
from pypdf import PdfReader
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
for page in reader.pages:
text = page.extract_text()
print(text)
Layout-Aware Extraction
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
text = page.extract_text()
words = page.extract_words() # With positioning
print(text)
Extract from Specific Region
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
page = pdf.pages[0]
bbox = (0, 0, 612, 100) # x0, y0, x1, y1
header = page.crop(bbox).extract_text()
For detailed text extraction methods including OCR fallback and encoding handling, see:
Table Extraction Workflow
Extract All Tables
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
tables = page.extract_tables()
for table in tables:
print(table)
Advanced Table Detection
table_settings = {
"vertical_strategy": "lines",
"horizontal_strategy": "lines",
"snap_tolerance": 3
}
tables = page.extract_tables(table_settings=table_settings)
For detailed table extraction strategies and data cleaning, see:
PDF Form Operations
Fill Form Fields
import fitz
doc = fitz.open("form.pdf")
for page in doc:
for widget in page.widgets():
if widget.field_name == "name":
widget.field_value = "John Doe"
widget.update()
doc.save("filled.pdf")
doc.close()
Extract Form Field Names
doc = fitz.open("form.pdf")
for page in doc:
for widget in page.widgets():
print(f"{widget.field_name}: {widget.field_type_string}")
doc.close()
For form filling, flattening, and debugging, see:
Merging and Splitting
Merge PDFs
from pypdf import PdfMerger
merger = PdfMerger()
for pdf in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]:
merger.append(pdf)
merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()
Merge with Page Ranges
merger = PdfMerger()
merger.append("doc1.pdf", pages=(0, 3)) # First 3 pages
merger.append("doc2.pdf") # All pages
merger.write("compiled.pdf")
merger.close()
Split into Individual Pages
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("document.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)
For merging with bookmarks and splitting by size, see:
Creating PDFs
Simple Text PDF
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)
c.drawString(50, 750, "Hello, World!")
c.save()
Styled Report
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf")
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []
story.append(Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title']))
story.append(Spacer(1, 12))
story.append(Paragraph("Content here", styles['BodyText']))
doc.build(story)
PDF with Table
from reportlab.platypus import Table, TableStyle
from reportlab.lib import colors
data = [
['Product', 'Quantity', 'Price'],
['Widget A', '10', '$50'],
['Widget B', '5', '$75']
]
table = Table(data)
table.setStyle(TableStyle([
('BACKGROUND', (0, 0), (-1, 0), colors.grey),
('GRID', (0, 0), (-1, -1), 1, colors.black)
]))
For complete PDF creation workflows including images, multi-column layouts, and custom fonts, see:
For practical examples:
Metadata and Security
Extract Metadata
from pypdf import PdfReader
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
metadata = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {metadata.get('/Title')}")
print(f"Author: {metadata.get('/Author')}")
Modify Metadata
from pypdf import PdfWriter
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
writer.add_page(page)
writer.add_metadata({
'/Title': 'New Title',
'/Author': 'John Doe'
})
with open("updated.pdf", 'wb') as f:
writer.write(f)
Add Password Protection
writer.encrypt(
user_password="user123",
owner_password="owner456",
algorithm="AES-256"
)
For detailed security operations and comprehensive metadata management, see:
OCR for Scanned Documents
Basic OCR
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
import pytesseract
images = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")
for i, image in enumerate(images):
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
print(f"Page {i+1}:\n{text}")
Multi-Language OCR
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(image, lang='eng+fra+deu')
For searchable PDF creation and OCR preprocessing, see:
Watermarks and Annotations
Add Text Watermark
import fitz
doc = fitz.open("document.pdf")
for page in doc:
page.insert_textbox(
page.rect,
"CONFIDENTIAL",
fontsize=50,
rotate=45,
opacity=0.3,
color=(0.7, 0.7, 0.7)
)
doc.save("watermarked.pdf")
doc.close()
Add Annotations
page.add_highlight_annot(rect) # Highlight
page.add_text_annot(point, "Note") # Text note
page.add_underline_annot(rect) # Underline
For stamps and image watermarks, see:
Page Operations
Rotate Pages
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
page.rotate(90)
writer.add_page(page)
with open("rotated.pdf", 'wb') as f:
writer.write(f)
Extract Images
import fitz
doc = fitz.open("document.pdf")
for