pdf-processing-pro

What this skill does

# PDF Processing Pro

Production-ready PDF processing toolkit with pre-built scripts, comprehensive error handling, and support for complex workflows.

## Quick start

### Extract text from PDF

```python
import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text()
    print(text)
```

### Analyse PDF form (using included script)

```bash
python scripts/analyze_form.py input.pdf --output fields.json
# Returns: JSON with all form fields, types, and positions
```

### Fill PDF form with validation

```bash
python scripts/fill_form.py input.pdf data.json output.pdf
# Validates all fields before filling, includes error reporting
```

### Extract tables from PDF

```bash
python scripts/extract_tables.py report.pdf --output tables.csv
# Extracts all tables with automatic column detection
```

## Features

### Production-ready scripts

- Error handling with detailed messages and proper exit codes
- Input validation, type checking, and configurable logging
- Full type annotations and CLI interface (`--help` on all scripts)

### Comprehensive workflows

- PDF forms, table extraction, OCR processing
- Batch operations, pre/post-processing validation

## Advanced topics

### PDF form processing

Complete form workflows including field analysis, dynamic filling, validation rules, multi-page forms, and checkbox/radio handling. See [references/forms.md](references/forms.md).

### Table extraction

Complex table extraction including multi-page tables, merged cells, nested tables, custom detection, and CSV/Excel export. See [references/tables.md](references/tables.md).

### OCR processing

Scanned PDFs and image-based documents including Tesseract integration, language support, image preprocessing, and confidence scoring. See [references/ocr.md](references/ocr.md).

## Included scripts

| Script | Purpose | Usage |
|--------|---------|-------|
| analyze_form.py | Extract form field info | `python scripts/analyze_form.py input.pdf [--output fields.json] [--verbose]` |
| fill_form.py | Fill PDF forms with data | `python scripts/fill_form.py input.pdf data.json output.pdf [--validate]` |
| validate_form.py | Validate form data before filling | `python scripts/validate_form.py data.json schema.json` |
| extract_tables.py | Extract tables to CSV/Excel | `python scripts/extract_tables.py input.pdf [--output tables.csv] [--format csv\|excel]` |
| extract_text.py | Extract text with formatting | `python scripts/extract_text.py input.pdf [--output text.txt] [--preserve-formatting]` |
| merge_pdfs.py | Merge multiple PDFs | `python scripts/merge_pdfs.py file1.pdf file2.pdf --output merged.pdf` |
| split_pdf.py | Split PDF into pages | `python scripts/split_pdf.py input.pdf --output-dir pages/` |
| validate_pdf.py | Validate PDF integrity | `python scripts/validate_pdf.py input.pdf` |

## Dependencies

All scripts require:

```bash
pip install pdfplumber pypdf pillow pytesseract pandas
```

Optional for OCR:

```bash
# macOS: brew install tesseract
# Ubuntu: apt-get install tesseract-ocr
# Windows: Download from GitHub releases
```

## References

| File | Contents |
|------|----------|
| [references/forms.md](references/forms.md) | Complete form processing guide |
| [references/tables.md](references/tables.md) | Advanced table extraction |
| [references/ocr.md](references/ocr.md) | Scanned PDF processing |
| [references/workflows.md](references/workflows.md) | Common workflows, error handling, performance tips, best practices |
| [references/troubleshooting.md](references/troubleshooting.md) | Troubleshooting common issues and getting help |