Linux – How to merge pdfs and create bookmarks for each input file in output file? (linux)

bookmarkslinuxmergeopen sourcepdf

I'm using Linux and I would like to have software (or script, method) which merges some pdfs and creates an united output pdf, containing bookmarks. Bookmarks are named by filename of pdf files, which were used for merging and pointing to the page number, where these files begin.

Similar possibilities have Adobe Acrobat, but it is non-free and Windows-only.

Best Answer

UPDATE: I wasn't satisfied with the result and have written this with nice GUI:

https://github.com/Yanpas/PdfMerger

Learned python and has written (modified) program in one hour:

#! /usr/bin/env python
# Original author Nicholas Kim, modified by Yan Pashkovsky
# New license - GPL v3
import sys
import time
from PyPDF2 import utils, PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter

def get_cmdline_arguments():
    """Retrieve command line arguments."""
    
    from optparse import OptionParser
    
    usage_string = "%prog [-o output_name] file1, file2 [, ...]"

    parser = OptionParser(usage_string)
    parser.add_option(
        "-o", "--output",
        dest="output_filename",
        default=time.strftime("output_%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"),
        help="specify output filename (exclude .pdf extension); default is current date/time stamp"
    )
    
    options, args = parser.parse_args()
    if len(args) < 2:
        parser.print_help()
        sys.exit(1)
    return options, args
    
def main():
    options, filenames = get_cmdline_arguments()
    output_pdf_name = options.output_filename + ".pdf"
    files_to_merge = []

    # get PDF files
    for f in filenames:
        try:
            next_pdf_file = PdfFileReader(open(f, "rb"))
        except(utils.PdfReadError):
            print >>sys.stderr, "%s is not a valid PDF file." % f
            sys.exit(1)
        except(IOError):
            print >>sys.stderr, "%s could not be found." % f
            sys.exit(1)
        else:
            files_to_merge.append(next_pdf_file)

    # merge page by page
    output_pdf_stream = PdfFileWriter()
    j=0
    k=0
    for f in files_to_merge:
        for i in range(f.numPages):
            output_pdf_stream.addPage(f.getPage(i))
            if i==0:
                output_pdf_stream.addBookmark(str(filenames[k]),j)
            j = j + 1
        k += 1
        
    # create output pdf file
    try:
        output_pdf_file = open(output_pdf_name, "wb")
        output_pdf_stream.write(output_pdf_file)
    finally:
        output_pdf_file.close()

    print "%s successfully created." % output_pdf_name


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This program requires PyPDF2, you can install it via sudo pip install pypdf2, before this you need to install pip :) Just open terminal and enter ./pdfmerger.py *.pdf

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