squirly has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi All, looking for a way of reading the Page Label from a PDF in Perl; and if that's not possible then a way of adding / reading metadata.

Problem I'm working to solve is that I'm using a PDF file as a 'template', and then reading in another file of 'data', and then based on the dynamic data, the script is keyed to extract a page from the template and insert into a new pdf (each template page being potentially recycled n times for each completed output pdf).

This is working, and for proof of concept I keyed the script to use page_numbers (page 1 is a basic contents page template, page 2 is a legaleaze disclaimer page that is added at the end of a set of pages for each member for example) in the template pdf, however I need a way of expressing to the script which pages are which for the eventual production environment; they won't always be arbitrary page 1 = this, page 2 = this; sometimes the template may have up to six different pages, each with a different purpose.

Was thinking an easy way of addressing this was to give each page a label and then keying the script off of the label names, however I can't figure out how to extract the page label from the input pdf template; only how to set a label.

Currently using the PDF::API2 library, however am open to using any library in order to read and extra the page_label=page_number information (that'll be stored in an eventual hash / associative array).

Appreciate any and all assistance, and I apologize for rudimentary post, it's my first attempt reaching out.

Thank you!

  • Comment on Reading page label (name) from PDF file...

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Re: Reading page label (name) from PDF file...
by poj (Abbot) on May 25, 2016 at 06:38 UTC

    Could you use a Document Property e.g. Keywords ?

    #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use PDF::API2;

# A4
my $pdf = PDF::API2->new(
  width  => 595, height => 842,    
);

my $page = $pdf->page;
my $txt  = $page->text;
my $font = $pdf->corefont('Times-Roman');
$txt->font( $font, 32 );
$txt->translate( 100, 500 );
$txt->text( 'Test PDF with Keywords' );

my @pages = qw(
PageName1 PageName2 PageName3
PageName4 PageName5 PageName6
PageName7 PageName8 PageName9 );

$pdf->info(
  'Keywords' => join ';',@pages
);
$pdf->saveas('template.pdf');

my $pdf1 = PDF::API2->open('template.pdf');
my %info = $pdf1->info();

my @pages = split ';',$info{'Keywords'};
print join "\n",@pages;

    [download]
    poj
[reply]
[d/l]

      Thank you! That works!

      My original direction was to attempt to label the pages in order to get a handle on them; adding keyword meta data to describe the pages works equally well.

      I really appreciate your help.

      I used your code snippet and adapted to to read some custom tags in form of "stmnt1=1;disclaimer=2;etc" and it works!

      # retrieve page labels from pdf (specified in pdf keywords section as 
+pagelabel=#;pagelabel=#;pagelabel=#;etc...)
    my %info = $pdf_template->info();
    my %page_labels = ();
    my @attributes;

    if (defined $info{'Keywords'}) {
        my @pages = split ';',$info{'Keywords'};

        foreach (@pages) { 
            
            @attributes = split "=",$_;

            $page_labels{$attributes[0]} = $attributes[1];

            if (($debugging != 0 ) || ($verbose !=0 )) {
                print "$attributes[0]: $attributes[1]\n";
            }
        } 

        undef @pages;

    }

    undef %info;
    undef @attributes;

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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