This guide will help you run PDFTron samples and integrate a free trial of the PDFTron SDK into Python applications on macOS. Your free trial includes unlimited trial usage and support from solution engineers.

There are two ways to use PDFTron with Python:

• Use the precompiled library for Python 2.7.
• Use PDFNet bindings to build your own wrapper.

This guide will help you get started by building your own wrapper. You can find more information about using the precompiled library here .

linkPrerequisites

• Python3 or Python2 with developer extensions
• CMake version ≥ 2.8
• PDFTron SDK for macOS:
  
  Download for macOS
• SWIG 2.0.4 - 2.0.12 or SWIG 3.x

linkInitial setup

1. Make a directory to store the wrappers and navigate into that directory.

2. Clone the uncompiled PDFNet wrappers project by executing

   git clone https://github.com/PDFTron/PDFNetWrappers

3. Navigate to PDFNetWrappers/PDFNetC and move the downloaded [PDFNet C/C++ SDK] for macOS(#prerequisites) into that directory and unzip it. Ensure you obtain the right architecture for your Python interpreter. This can be done with these two commands:

   curl -L -O http://www.pdftron.com/downloads/PDFNetCMac.zip
   unzip PDFNetCMac.zip

4. Now to move the headers in place, make sure you are in the PDFNetWrappers/PDFNetC directory and execute

   mv PDFNetCMac/Headers/ .

   and

   mv PDFNetCMac/Lib/ .

   to move the PDFNet libraries in place.

   You can delete PDFNetCMac.zip to free up space.

   Your /PDFNetC folder should be laid out like this like this:

   PDFNetC
   ├── Headers
   ├── Lib
   ├── PDFNetCMac
   └── README.txt

5. Make a build directory inside /PDFNetWrappers and navigate to it. This guide will assume the build directory is called Build.

6. Execute

   cmake -D BUILD_PDFNetPython=ON ..

   If all goes well, you should get a message which reads:

   Build files have been written to ~/PDFNetWrappers/Build

7. Execute make followed by sudo make install.

8. Next we need to fix the rpaths issue on Mac. While still in the same Build directory, execute these lines:

   cp ../fix_rpaths.sh ../PDFNetC/Lib/
   cd ../PDFNetC/Lib/
   sudo sh ./fix_rpaths.sh

You are now ready to run the samples or integrate PDFTron SDK into your own application.

linkRun the samples

Running a specific sample

1. Navigate to the PYTHON folder in the sample, for example /Samples/AddImageTest/PYTHON and execute ./RunTest.sh.

Run all samples

1. To run all tests, navigate to /Samples and execute

   ./runall_python.sh

   The tests will run one by one.

linkIntegrate into your application

This section will show you how to use our SDK to create a simple PDFTron "Hello World!" application. It will create a document with one blank page and save it as a linearized PDF in its running directory.

1. Navigate to the /Samples directory and create a new directory called myApp (if it does not exist already). This guide will assume your application is named myApp. For organization, create a new directory inside myApp called PYTHON.

2. Navigate inside that PYTHON directory and create a new Python file called myApp.py. Open it with your favorite text editor and paste this into it:

   import site
   # below is the relative path to PDFTron PDFNetC libraries
   site.addsitedir("../../../PDFNetC/Lib")
   import sys
   from PDFNetPython import *
   
   def main():
       PDFNet.Initialize()
       doc = PDFDoc()
       page = doc.PageCreate()         # Start a new page
       doc.PagePushBack(page)          # Add the page to the document
       doc.Save("output.pdf", SDFDoc.e_linearized);  # Save the document as a linearized PDF
       print("Hello World!")
   
   if __name__ == '__main__':
       main()

3. Run your application via python myApp.py. If all goes well your output should read:

   PDFNet is running in demo mode.
   Permission: write
   Hello World!

Check the output.pdf that the program output in the same directory. It should be a PDF with one blank page.

linkNext step

GuidesSamples

linkTroubleshooting

Check the troubleshooting page if you run into any issues going through this document.