When I print a PDF from any of my source PDFs, the file size drops and removes the text boxes presents in form. In short, it flattens the file. This is behavior I want to achieve.
The following code to create a PDF using another PDF as a source (the one I want to flatten), it writes the text boxes form as well.
Can I get a PDF without the text boxes, flatten it? Just like Adobe does when I print a PDF as a PDF.
My other code looks something like this minus some things:
import os
import StringIO
from pyPdf import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
directory = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "source") # dir we are interested in
fif = [f for f in os.listdir(directory) if f[-3:] == 'pdf'] # get the PDFs
for i in fif:
packet = StringIO.StringIO()
can = canvas.Canvas(packet, pagesize=letter)
can.rotate(-90)
can.save()
packet.seek(0)
new_pdf = PdfFileReader(packet)
fname = os.path.join('source', i)
existing_pdf = PdfFileReader(file(fname, "rb"))
output = PdfFileWriter()
nump = existing_pdf.getNumPages()
page = existing_pdf.getPage(0)
for l in range(nump):
output.addPage(existing_pdf.getPage(l))
page.mergePage(new_pdf.getPage(0))
outputStream = file("out-"+i, "wb")
output.write(outputStream)
outputStream.close()
print fName + " written as", i
Summing up: I have a pdf, I add a text box to it, covering up info and adding new info, and then I print a pdf from that pdf. The text box becomes not editable or moveable any longer. I wanted to automate that process but everything I tried still allowed that text box to be editable.
If installing an OS package is an option, then you could use pdftk
with its python wrapper pypdftk
like this:
import pypdftk
pypdftk.fill_form('filled.pdf', out_file='flattened.pdf', flatten=True)
You would also need to install the pdftk
package, which on Ubuntu could be done like this:
sudo apt-get install pdftk
The pypdftk
library can by downloaded from PyPI:
pip install pypdftk