Skip to content

Other utilities⚓︎

PyPDFForm offers additional utilities similar to other PDF libraries.

This section of the documentation uses this PDF as an example.

Blank PDFs⚓︎

Use the BlankPage class with PdfWrapper to create blank PDFs.

The following example generates a PDF with a single blank page:

from PyPDFForm import BlankPage, PdfWrapper

blank_pdf = PdfWrapper(BlankPage())

blank_pdf.write("output.pdf")

By default, BlankPage creates a letter-size blank page (612 x 792 points, or 8.5 x 11 inches). To change the dimensions, specify width and height in points:

from PyPDFForm import BlankPage, PdfWrapper

blank_pdf = PdfWrapper(BlankPage(width=595.35, height=841.995)) # A4 size

blank_pdf.write("output.pdf")

To create a blank PDF with multiple pages, multiply the BlankPage object by the number of pages you need:

from PyPDFForm import BlankPage, PdfWrapper

blank_pdf = PdfWrapper(BlankPage() * 3) # 3 pages of letter size

blank_pdf.write("output.pdf")

From the CLI, create blank PDFs with create blank:

pypdfform create blank -o output.pdf

pypdfform create blank -o output.pdf \
    --width 595.35 \
    --height 841.995

pypdfform create blank -o output.pdf -c 3

Extract pages⚓︎

The PdfWrapper object has a .pages attribute, which is a PdfArray containing one PdfWrapper object per page:

from PyPDFForm import PdfWrapper

first_page = PdfWrapper("sample_template.pdf").pages[0]
first_page.fill(
    {
        "test": "test_1",
        "check": True,
    },
)

first_page.write("output.pdf")

The CLI equivalent is create extract:

pypdfform create extract sample_template.pdf \
    --start 1 \
    --end 1 \
    -o output.pdf

Merge multiple PDFs⚓︎

You can merge multiple PDF files by adding their PdfWrapper objects together. For example, to merge this PDF and this PDF:

from PyPDFForm import PdfWrapper

pdf_one = PdfWrapper("dummy.pdf")
pdf_two = PdfWrapper("sample_template.pdf")
merged = pdf_one + pdf_two

merged.write("output.pdf")

from PyPDFForm import PdfWrapper

pdf_one = PdfWrapper("dummy.pdf")
pdf_two = PdfWrapper("sample_template.pdf")
merged = pdf_two.pages[0] + pdf_one + pdf_two.pages[1:]

merged.write("output.pdf")

When merging a large number of PDF files, use the PdfArray.merge method for better performance:

from PyPDFForm import PdfArray, PdfWrapper

pdfs = PdfArray(
    [
        PdfWrapper("dummy.pdf"),
        PdfWrapper("sample_template.pdf"),
        # can get very large
    ]
)
merged = pdfs.merge()

merged.write("output.pdf")

For CLI merges, pass the input PDFs to create merge:

pypdfform create merge dummy.pdf sample_template.pdf -o output.pdf

pypdfform create extract sample_template.pdf --start 1 --end 1 -o first_page.pdf
pypdfform create extract sample_template.pdf --start 2 -o remaining_pages.pdf
pypdfform create merge first_page.pdf dummy.pdf remaining_pages.pdf -o output.pdf

Change PDF version⚓︎

PyPDFForm allows you to set the PDF version to any supported value up to 2.0:

from PyPDFForm import PdfWrapper

new_version = PdfWrapper("sample_template.pdf").change_version("2.0")
new_version.write("output.pdf")

From the CLI, set the version with update version:

pypdfform update version sample_template.pdf -v 2.0 -o output.pdf