Yesterday I got a review copy of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. It explains, among other things, how to manipulate PDFs from Python. This morning I needed to rotate some pages in a PDF, so I decided to try out the method in the book.
The sample code uses PyPDF2. I’m using Conda for my Python environment, and PyPDF2 isn’t directly available for Conda. I searched Binstar with
binstar search -t conda pypdf2
The first hit was from JimInCO, so I installed PyPDF2 with
conda install -c https://conda.binstar.org/JimInCO pypdf2
I scanned a few pages from a book to PDF, turning the book around every other page, so half the pages in the PDF were upside down. I needed a script to rotate the even numbered pages. The script counts pages from 0, so it rotates the odd numbered pages from its perspective.
import PyPDF2
pdf_in = open('original.pdf', 'rb')
pdf_reader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_in)
pdf_writer = PyPDF2.PdfFileWriter()
for pagenum in range(pdf_reader.numPages):
page = pdf_reader.getPage(pagenum)
if pagenum % 2:
page.rotateClockwise(180)
pdf_writer.addPage(page)
pdf_out = open('rotated.pdf', 'wb')
pdf_writer.write(pdf_out)
pdf_out.close()
pdf_in.close()
It worked as advertised on the first try.
For comparison, the Perl version:
use PDF::API2; my $pdf = PDF::API2->open('original.pdf'); for my $pagenum (1 .. $pdf->pages) { if ($pagenum % 2) { my $page = $pdf->openpage($pagenum); $page->rotate(180); } } $pdf->saveas('rotated.pdf');Hi! Thanks for the post. Wouldn’t it be slightly more efficient to only loop through the pages you want to rotate by changing the increment in the range function? Might make a big difference in larger documents.
Hi,
Are you missing an else statement?
Your code only prints the odd / rotated pages.
This worked for me:
import PyPDF2
pdf_in = open(‘original.pdf’, ‘rb’)
pdf_reader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_in)
pdf_writer = PyPDF2.PdfFileWriter()
for pagenum in range(pdf_reader.numPages):
page = pdf_reader.getPage(pagenum)
if pagenum % 2:
page.rotateClockwise(180)
pdf_writer.addPage(page)
else:
pdf_writer.addPage(page)
pdf_out = open(‘rotated.pdf’, ‘wb’)
pdf_writer.write(pdf_out)
pdf_out.close()
pdf_in.close()