Edit PDF Text

[avik]

Dear Perl Monks, Simple question: i need to replace all ocurrences of a word within a PDF file. Is there a simple way to do it using PDF::API2 or PDF::Reuse?.. Thanks, A.T.

[ghenry]

You can't with PDF::Reuse (AFAIK), but can with PDF::API2

In the Generic Methods, are the examples:

$pdf = PDF::API2->new();
...
print $pdf->stringify;

$pdf = PDF::API2->new();
...
$pdf->saveas("our/new.pdf");

$pdf = PDF::API2->new(-file => 'our/new.pdf');
...
$pdf->save;

You could maybe sprintf the above print and manipulate the scalar that way, but I would print it first to see what comes out, or maybe try openScalar

open($fh,'our/stream.pdf') or die "$@";
@pdf = <$fh>;
$pdf = PDF::API->openScalar(join('',@pdf));
...
$pdf->saveas('our/new.pdf');

You really only need to somehow grab the text with either of above, and then see what you can do with it.

HTH,
Gavin.

[jbullock35]

It might be easiest to uncompress the PDF with pdftk and then just use perl for the substitution:

   pdftk old.pdf output new.pdf uncompress
   perl -pi -e 's/oldstring/newstring/g' new.pdf

If you want to recompress the file,

   pdftk new.pdf output new_compress.pdf compress

[avik]

Thanks, I will take a look at this option!