Merge PDF files
You can use PyPdf2s PdfMerger
class.
File Concatenation
You can simply concatenate files by using the append
method.
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileMergerpdfs = ['file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf', 'file3.pdf', 'file4.pdf']merger = PdfFileMerger()for pdf in pdfs: merger.append(pdf)merger.write("result.pdf")merger.close()
You can pass file handles instead file paths if you want.
File Merging
If you want more fine grained control of merging there is a merge
method of the PdfMerger
, which allows you to specify an insertion point in the output file, meaning you can insert the pages anywhere in the file. The append
method can be thought of as a merge
where the insertion point is the end of the file.
e.g.
merger.merge(2, pdf)
Here we insert the whole pdf into the output but at page 2.
Page Ranges
If you wish to control which pages are appended from a particular file, you can use the pages
keyword argument of append
and merge
, passing a tuple in the form (start, stop[, step])
(like the regular range
function).
e.g.
merger.append(pdf, pages=(0, 3)) # first 3 pagesmerger.append(pdf, pages=(0, 6, 2)) # pages 1,3, 5
If you specify an invalid range you will get an IndexError
.
Note: also that to avoid files being left open, the PdfFileMerger
s close method should be called when the merged file has been written. This ensures all files are closed (input and output) in a timely manner. It's a shame that PdfFileMerger
isn't implemented as a context manager, so we can use the with
keyword, avoid the explicit close call and get some easy exception safety.
You might also want to look at the pdfcat
script provided as part of pypdf2. You can potentially avoid the need to write code altogether.
The PyPdf2 github also includes some example code demonstrating merging.
PyMuPdf
Another library perhaps worth a look is PyMuPdf which seems to be actively maintained. Merging is equally simple
From command line:
python -m fitz join -o result.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf
and from code
import fitzresult = fitz.open()for pdf in ['file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf', 'file3.pdf']: with fitz.open(pdf) as mfile: result.insertPDF(mfile) result.save("result.pdf")
With plenty of options, detailed in the projects wiki.
Use Pypdf or its successor PyPDF2:
A Pure-Python library built as a PDF toolkit. It is capable of:
- splitting documents page by page,
- merging documents page by page,
(and much more)
Here's a sample program that works with both versions.
#!/usr/bin/env pythonimport systry: from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriterexcept ImportError: from pyPdf import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriterdef pdf_cat(input_files, output_stream): input_streams = [] try: # First open all the files, then produce the output file, and # finally close the input files. This is necessary because # the data isn't read from the input files until the write # operation. Thanks to # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6773631/problem-with-closing-python-pypdf-writing-getting-a-valueerror-i-o-operation/6773733#6773733 for input_file in input_files: input_streams.append(open(input_file, 'rb')) writer = PdfFileWriter() for reader in map(PdfFileReader, input_streams): for n in range(reader.getNumPages()): writer.addPage(reader.getPage(n)) writer.write(output_stream) finally: for f in input_streams: f.close() output_stream.close()if __name__ == '__main__': if sys.platform == "win32": import os, msvcrt msvcrt.setmode(sys.stdout.fileno(), os.O_BINARY) pdf_cat(sys.argv[1:], sys.stdout)
Merge all pdf files that are present in a dir
Put the pdf files in a dir. Launch the program. You get one pdf with all the pdfs merged.
import osfrom PyPDF2 import PdfFileMergerx = [a for a in os.listdir() if a.endswith(".pdf")]merger = PdfFileMerger()for pdf in x: merger.append(open(pdf, 'rb'))with open("result.pdf", "wb") as fout: merger.write(fout)
How would I make the same code above today
from glob import globfrom PyPDF2 import PdfFileMergerdef pdf_merge(): ''' Merges all the pdf files in current directory ''' merger = PdfFileMerger() allpdfs = [a for a in glob("*.pdf")] [merger.append(pdf) for pdf in allpdfs] with open("Merged_pdfs.pdf", "wb") as new_file: merger.write(new_file)if __name__ == "__main__": pdf_merge()