Combine with PyPDF2¶

fpdf2 cannot parse existing PDF files.

However, other Python libraries can be combined with fpdf2 in order to add new content to existing PDF files.

This page provides several examples of doing so using PyPDF2.

Adding content onto an existing PDF page¶

In this code snippet, new content will be added on top of existing content:

import io, sys

from fpdf import FPDF
from PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter

IN_FILEPATH = sys.argv[1]
OUT_FILEPATH = sys.argv[2]
ON_PAGE_INDEX = 0  # Index of the target page (starts at zero)

def new_content():
    pdf = FPDF()
    pdf.add_page()
    pdf.set_font('times', 'B', 30)
    pdf.text(50, 150, 'Hello World!')
    return pdf.output()

reader = PdfReader(IN_FILEPATH)
page_overlay = PdfReader(io.BytesIO(new_content())).getPage(0)
reader.getPage(ON_PAGE_INDEX).merge_page(page2=page_overlay)

writer = PdfWriter()
writer.append_pages_from_reader(reader)
writer.write(OUT_FILEPATH)

Adding a page to an existing PDF¶

import io, sys

from fpdf import FPDF
from PyPDF2 import PdfMerger

IN_FILEPATH = sys.argv[1]
OUT_FILEPATH = sys.argv[2]
ON_PAGE_INDEX = 2  # Index at which the page will be inserted (starts at zero)

def new_page():
    pdf = FPDF()
    pdf.add_page()
    pdf.set_font('times', 'B', 19)
    pdf.text(50, 10, 'Hello World!')
    return io.BytesIO(pdf.output())

merger = PdfMerger()
merger.merge(position=0, fileobj=IN_FILEPATH)
merger.merge(position=ON_PAGE_INDEX, fileobj=new_page())
merger.write(OUT_FILEPATH)

Altering with PyPDF2 a document generated with fpdf2¶

A document created with fpdf2 can the be edited with PyPDF2 by passing its .output() to a PyPDF2.PdfReader:

import io
from fpdf import FPDF
from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.add_page()
pdf.set_font('times', 'B', 19)
pdf.text(50, 10, 'Hello World!')

reader = PdfReader(io.BytesIO(pdf.output()))