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


my $file_in = $ARGV[0];
my $prepend = $ARGV[1];
$prepend ||= 'out';



my $pdf = CAM::PDF->new($file_in);
my $count = $pdf->numPages;
undef $pdf;

for my $i ( 0 .. ( $count - 1 )){
   my $_i = ($i+1);

   my $file_out = sprintf "%s_page_%04d.pdf", $file_in, $_i;
   # make sure it's not there
   unlink $file_out;

   
   my $pdf = CAM::PDF->new($file_in);
   $pdf->extractPages($_i);
   $pdf->cleansave;

   $pdf->output($file_out);

   print STDERR "saved $file_out\n";

}


exit;
[download]

It works. Slowly. You can see I am re-instancing a whole new pdf object for each one page I want. So, it the pdf has 110 pages, I have to re-instance 110 times, one for each page.

I can't figure out another way right now with CAM::PDF.

I really wish the documentation were a little bit better for these modules, PDF::API2 and CAM::PDF- and what's with the naming all the methods different? like numPages() and pages()- the interface is an inconsistency from hell- I don't care how much they worked on this- the messy api is unforgiveable.

I know the feeling :/ Generally speaking, PDF::API2 is powerful but old and of poor quality, while CAM::PDF is clean but slow and lacks features. Specifically, CAM::PDF eagerly loads the whole file in memory before anything else, while more advanced libraries like PDF::API2 take a lazy and more efficient approach.

The truth is, the PDF specification is 1300+ pages and growing. I don't think any of these packages is ever going to implement it fully and correctly, while still providing additional abstraction layers and tests (workload x2) and a comprehensive documentation (workload x3).

PDF::API2 is on the right path as far as code structure goes, but has no tests (assume it's broken ;-) and its meager documentation requires that you know the PDF specs already. On the other hand, the CAM::API2 code is of much higher quality (tests, docs) while less advanced, and the library as a whole is begging for a redesign (106 methods in the one public class, yuck). Volunteers, anyone? :-)