PDF Processing

Quick start

Use pdfplumber to extract text from PDFs:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text() print(text)

Extracting tables

Extract tables from PDFs with automatic detection:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf: page = pdf.pages[0] tables = page.extract_tables()

for table in tables:
    for row in table:
        print(row)

Extracting all pages

Process multi-page documents efficiently:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: full_text = "" for page in pdf.pages: full_text += page.extract_text() + "\n\n"

print(full_text)

Form filling

For PDF form filling, see FORMS.md for the complete guide including field analysis and validation.

Merging PDFs

Combine multiple PDF files:

from pypdf import PdfMerger

merger = PdfMerger()

for pdf in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]: merger.append(pdf)

merger.write("merged.pdf") merger.close()

Splitting PDFs

Extract specific pages or ranges:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

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

Extract pages 2-5

for page_num in range(1, 5): writer.add_page(reader.pages[page_num])

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

Available packages

• pdfplumber - Text and table extraction (recommended)

• pypdf - PDF manipulation, merging, splitting

• pdf2image - Convert PDFs to images (requires poppler)

• pytesseract - OCR for scanned PDFs (requires tesseract)

Common patterns

Extract and save text:

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("input.pdf") as pdf: text = "\n\n".join(page.extract_text() for page in pdf.pages)

with open("output.txt", "w") as f: f.write(text)

Extract tables to CSV:

import pdfplumber import csv

with pdfplumber.open("tables.pdf") as pdf: tables = pdf.pages[0].extract_tables()

with open("output.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    for table in tables:
        writer.writerows(table)

Error handling

Handle common PDF issues:

import pdfplumber

try: with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: if len(pdf.pages) == 0: print("PDF has no pages") else: text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text() if text is None or text.strip() == "": print("Page contains no extractable text (might be scanned)") else: print(text) except Exception as e: print(f"Error processing PDF: {e}")

Performance tips

• Process pages in batches for large PDFs

• Use multiprocessing for multiple files

• Extract only needed pages rather than entire document

• Close PDF objects after use