- name
- pdf-tools
- description
- View, extract, edit, and manipulate PDF files. Supports text extraction, text editing (overlay and replacement), merging, splitting, rotating pages, and getting PDF metadata. Use when working with PDF documents for reading content, adding/editing text, reorganizing pages, combining files, or extracting information.
PDF Tools
Tools for viewing, extracting, and editing PDF files using Python libraries (pdfplumber and PyPDF2).
Quick Start
All scripts require dependencies:
pip3 install pdfplumber PyPDF2Core Operations
Extract Text
Extract text from PDF (all pages or specific pages):
scripts/extract_text.py document.pdf
scripts/extract_text.py document.pdf -p 1 3 5
scripts/extract_text.py document.pdf -o output.txtGet PDF Info
View metadata and structure:
scripts/pdf_info.py document.pdf
scripts/pdf_info.py document.pdf -f jsonMerge PDFs
Combine multiple PDFs into one:
scripts/merge_pdfs.py file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf -o merged.pdfSplit PDF
Split into individual pages:
scripts/split_pdf.py document.pdf -o output_dir/Split by page ranges:
scripts/split_pdf.py document.pdf -o output_dir/ -m ranges -r "1-3,5-7,10-12"Rotate Pages
Rotate all pages or specific pages:
scripts/rotate_pdf.py document.pdf -o rotated.pdf -r 90
scripts/rotate_pdf.py document.pdf -o rotated.pdf -r 180 -p 1 3 5Edit Text
Add text overlay on a page:
scripts/edit_text.py document.pdf -o edited.pdf --overlay "New Text" --page 1 --x 100 --y 700
scripts/edit_text.py document.pdf -o edited.pdf --overlay "Watermark" --page 1 --x 200 --y 400 --font-size 20Replace text (limited, works best for simple cases):
scripts/edit_text.py document.pdf -o edited.pdf --replace "Old Text" "New Text"Note: PDF text editing is complex due to the format. The overlay method is more reliable than replacement.
Workflow Patterns
Viewing PDF Content
- Get basic info:
scripts/pdf_info.py file.pdf - Extract text to preview:
scripts/extract_text.py file.pdf -p 1 - Extract full text if needed:
scripts/extract_text.py file.pdf -o content.txt
Reorganizing PDFs
- Split into pages:
scripts/split_pdf.py input.pdf -o pages/ - Merge selected pages:
scripts/merge_pdfs.py pages/page_1.pdf pages/page_3.pdf -o reordered.pdf
Extracting Sections
- Get page count:
scripts/pdf_info.py document.pdf - Split by ranges:
scripts/split_pdf.py document.pdf -o sections/ -m ranges -r "1-5,10-15"
Advanced Usage
For detailed library documentation and advanced patterns, see references/libraries.md.
Notes
- Page numbers are 1-indexed in all scripts (page 1 = first page)
- Text extraction works best with text-based PDFs (not scanned images)
- Rotation angles: 90, 180, 270, or -90 (counterclockwise)
- All scripts validate file existence before processing