I am looking for a tool to extract a given rectangular region (by coordinates) of a 1-page PDF file and produce a 1-page PDF file with the specified region:
# in.pdf is a 1-page pdf file
extract file.pdf 0 0 100 100 > out.pdf
# out.pdf is now a 1-page pdf file with a page of size 100x100
# it contains the region (0, 0) to (100, 100) of file.pdf
I could convert the PDF to an image and use convert
, but this would mean that the resulting PDF would not be vectorial anymore, which is not acceptable (I want to be able to zoom).
I would ideally like to perform this task with a command-line tool or a Python library.
Thanks!
The following script found in
http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=18924
splits each page of a pdf into 2.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict; use warnings;
use PDF::API2;
my $filename = shift;
my $oldpdf = PDF::API2->open($filename);
my $newpdf = PDF::API2->new;
for my $page_nb (1..$oldpdf->pages) {
my ($page, @cropdata);
$page = $newpdf->importpage($oldpdf, $page_nb);
@cropdata = $page->get_mediabox;
$cropdata[2] /= 2;
$page->cropbox(@cropdata);
$page->trimbox(@cropdata);
$page->mediabox(@cropdata);
$page = $newpdf->importpage($oldpdf, $page_nb);
@cropdata = $page->get_mediabox;
$cropdata[0] = $cropdata[2] / 2;
$page->cropbox(@cropdata);
$page->trimbox(@cropdata);
$page->mediabox(@cropdata);
}
(my $newfilename = $filename) =~ s/(.*)\.(\w+)$/$1.clean.$2/;
$newpdf->saveas('destination_path/myfile.pdf');
using pyPdf, you could do something like this:
import sys
import pyPdf
def extract(in_file, coords, out_file):
with open(in_file, 'rb') as infp:
reader = pyPdf.PdfFileReader(infp)
page = reader.getPage(0)
writer = pyPdf.PdfFileWriter()
page.mediaBox.lowerLeft = coords[:2]
page.mediaBox.upperRight = coords[2:]
# you could do the same for page.trimBox and page.cropBox
writer.addPage(page)
with open(out_file, 'wb') as outfp:
writer.write(outfp)
if __name__ == '__main__':
in_file = sys.argv[1]
coords = [int(i) for i in sys.argv[2:6]]
out_file = sys.argv[6]
extract(in_file, coords, out_file)