PDF Processing Guide
Python Libraries
- pypdf: merge (
PdfWriter.add_page()), split, rotate, metadata, encrypt (writer.encrypt()), watermark (page.merge_page()) - pdfplumber: text extraction (
page.extract_text()), table extraction (page.extract_tables()→ pandas) - reportlab: create PDFs (Canvas for simple, Platypus/SimpleDocTemplate for multi-page)
- pytesseract + pdf2image: OCR scanned PDFs (
convert_from_path()→image_to_string())
CLI Tools
pdftotext(poppler): text extraction,-layoutpreserves layoutqpdf: merge (qpdf --empty --pages), split, rotate, decryptpdftk: merge, split (burst), rotate
Quick Reference
| Task | Best Tool | Key API |
|---|---|---|
| Extract text | pdfplumber | page.extract_text() |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber | page.extract_tables() → DataFrame |
| Merge | pypdf | PdfWriter().add_page() |
| Split | pypdf | iterate reader.pages |
| Create | reportlab | SimpleDocTemplate / Canvas |
| OCR | pytesseract | convert_from_path() → image_to_string() |
| Watermark | pypdf | page.merge_page() |
| Password | pypdf | writer.encrypt() |
User Request
$ARGUMENTS