The PyPDF2 package is a pure-Python PDF library that you can use for splitting, merging, cropping and transforming pages in your PDFs. According to the PyPDF2 website, you can also use PyPDF2 to add data, viewing options and passwords to the PDFs too. Finally you can use PyPDF2 to extract text and metadata from your PDFs.

PyPDF2 is actually a fork of the original pyPdf which was written by Mathiew Fenniak and released in 2005. However, the original pyPdf’s last release was in 2014. A company called Phaseit, Inc spoke with Mathieu and ended up sponsoring PyPDF2 as a fork of pyPdf

At the time of writing this book, the PyPDF2 package hasn’t had a release since 2016. However it is still a solid and useful package that is worth your time to learn.

The following lists what we will be learning in this article:

• Extracting metadata
• Splitting documents
• Merging 2 PDF files into 1
• Rotating pages
• Overlaying / Watermarking Pages
• Encrypting / decrypting

Let’s start by learning how to install PyPDF2!

Installation

PyPDF2 is a pure Python package, so you can install it using pip (assuming pip is in your system’s path):

python -m pip install pypdf2

As usual, you should install 3rd party Python packages to a Python virtual environment to make sure that it works the way you want it to. Continue reading An Intro to PyPDF2 →

The PyPDF2 package allows you to do a lot of useful operations on existing PDFs. In this article, we will learn how to split a single PDF into multiple smaller ones. We will also learn how to take a series of PDFs and join them back together into a single PDF.

Getting Started

PyPDF2 doesn’t come as a part of the Python Standard Library, so you will need to install it yourself. The preferred way to do so is to use pip.

pip install pypdf2

Now that we have PyPDF2 installed, let’s learn how to split and merge PDFs!

Splitting PDFs

The PyPDF2 package gives you the ability to split up a single PDF into multiple ones. You just need to tell it how many pages you want. For this example, we will download a W9 form from the IRS and loop over all six of its pages. We will split off each page and turn it into its own standalone PDF.

Let’s find out how:

# pdf_splitter.py
 
import os
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter
 
 
def pdf_splitter(path):
    fname = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(path))[0]
 
    pdf = PdfFileReader(path)
    for page in range(pdf.getNumPages()):
        pdf_writer = PdfFileWriter()
        pdf_writer.addPage(pdf.getPage(page))
 
        output_filename = '{}_page_{}.pdf'.format(
            fname, page+1)
 
        with open(output_filename, 'wb') as out:
            pdf_writer.write(out)
 
        print('Created: {}'.format(output_filename))
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    path = 'w9.pdf'
    pdf_splitter(path)

Continue reading Splitting and Merging PDFs with Python →

There are lots of PDF related packages for Python. One of my favorite is PyPDF2. You can use it to extract metadata, rotate pages, split or merge PDFs and more. It’s kind of a Swiss-army knife for existing PDFs. In this article we will learn how to extract basic information about a PDF using PyPDF2

Getting Started

PyPDF2 doesn’t come as a part of the Python Standard Library, so you will need to install it yourself. The preferred way to do so is to use pip.

pip install pypdf2

Now that we have PyPDF2 installed, let’s learn how to get metadata from a PDF! Continue reading Extracting PDF Metadata and Text with Python →