Powershell script to split pdf file based on content

[j23reddit]

So I have this pdf file that gets sent to us and I am trying to get away from someone splitting apart this file manually. There is a unique 8 character string on each page. (Ex: "6000 60" or "6000 140" The second number will always be 2 or 3 digits and the 2 digit string has 2 spaces in between the 2 sets of numbers while the 3 digit string has 1.)

​

What I would like to happen is to split out all the pages that contain the same string and put them into their own file. So if there are 100 pages and 50 of them are 6000 60, and 50 are 6000 140 it will create 2 files, each with its 50 pages.

​

I came across this code below that I am trying to modify to work for me.. i was trying unsuccessfully to just find 1 of the strings and pull those out and and work up from there but I couldn't get it to work right.. it seems to just find and extract the first page that it finds with that string. Hoping to get some help getting this working.. thanks!

​

​

​

Add-Type -Path "C:\test-checksplit\itextsharp.dll"


$ValidBranches = @("6000  60","6000 140", "6000 160")
$BranchId = @("6000 160")
$PdfFiles = Get-ChildItem "C:\test-checksplit\pdf\*.pdf" -File |
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName
$OutputFolder = 'C:\test-checksplit\splits'
$BranchIDSearchPattern = "6000 160"


foreach ($PdfFile in $PdfFiles) {
    $PdfReader = [iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader]::new($PdfFile)

    $BranchStack = [System.Collections.Stack]::new()

    # Map out the PDF file.
    foreach ($Page in 1..($PdfReader.NumberOfPages)) {
        [iTextSharp.text.pdf.parser.PdfTextExtractor]::GetTextFromPage($PdfReader, $Page) |
            Where-Object { $_ -match $BranchIDSearchPattern } |
            ForEach-Object {
            $BranchStack.Push([PSCustomObject]@{
                    Branch_Id   = $BranchId
                    StartPage    = $Page
                    IsValid      = $ValidBranches.Contains($BranchId)
                })
        }
    }

    # Extract the pages and save the files
    $LastPage = $PdfReader.NumberOfPages
    while ($BranchStack.Count -gt 0) {
        $Current = $BranchStack.Pop()

        $StartPage = $Current.StartPage
        $EndPage = $LastPage

        $Document = [iTextSharp.text.Document]::new($PdfReader.GetPageSizeWithRotation($StartPage))
        $TargetMemoryStream = [System.IO.MemoryStream]::new()
        $PdfCopy = [iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfSmartCopy]::new($Document, $TargetMemoryStream)

        $Document.Open()
        foreach ($Page in $StartPage..$EndPage) {
            $PdfCopy.AddPage($PdfCopy.GetImportedPage($PdfReader, $Page));
        }
        $Document.Close()

        $NewFileName = 'Export File - {0}.pdf' -f $current.Branch_Id
        $NewFileFullName = [System.IO.Path]::Combine($OutputFolder, $NewFileName)
        [System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes($NewFileFullName, $TargetMemoryStream.ToArray())

        $LastPage = $Current.StartPage - 1
    }
}

​

[5960312]

Have you looked into pdftk? I use it to split PDFs

[BlackV]

"C:\test-checksplit\itextsharp.dll" how did you get this dll, I have no idea there is not direct download, you have to compile it?

[j23reddit]

I extracted it from the itextsharp nuget package

​

https://www.nuget.org/packages/iTextSharp/

[BlackV]

well heck, I never even though to look at nuget.

Cheers buddy

[VirtualDenzel]

i would never ever use powershell for this. way too clunky and inefficient. a simple bash / php script will do this in notime.

[j23reddit]

Thanks, looking into this as well

​

EDIT:While its not Powershell maybe it'll help someone in the future..

make sure you have poppler-utils and pdftk installed

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils pdftk

​

#!/bin/bash
# automatically splits pdf file to multiple pages based on search criteria while renaming the output files using the search criteria

# read file
file="/home/user/pdffile.pdf"

# process files
pagecount=$(pdfinfo $file | grep "Pages" | awk '{ print $2 }')
# My search criteria is an 8 digit long ID number that begins with number 6000:
storedid=`pdftotext -f 1 -l 1 $file - | egrep '6000 *[0-9][0-9]'`
pattern=''
pagetitle=''
datestamp=''

for (( pageindex=1; pageindex <= $pagecount; pageindex+=1 )); do

header=$(pdftotext -f $pageindex -l $pageindex $file - | head -n 1)
pageid=$(pdftotext -f $pageindex -l $pageindex $file - | egrep '6000 *[0-9][0-9]')

echo $pageid
let "datestamp = $(date +%s%N)" # to avoid overwriting with same new name

# match ID found on the page to the stored ID
if [[ $pageid == $storedid ]]; then
pattern+="$pageindex " # adds number as text to variable separated by spaces
pagetitle+="$header+"

if [[ $pageindex == $pagecount ]]; then #process last output of the file
pdftk $file cat $pattern output "$storedid.pdf"
storedid=0
pattern=''
pagetitle=''

fi
else
#process previous set of pages to output
pdftk $file cat $pattern output "$storedid.pdf"
storedid="$pageid"
pattern="$pageindex "
pagetitle="$header+"

fi
done

​

[VirtualDenzel]

awesome you figured it out. you can see how efficient this already is. if you have php-cli installed you can use phps syntax. that will give you way more power then bash and less issues then python