Precompiled Python & Linux PDF library integration

This guide will help you run PDFTron samples and integrate a free trial of the PDFTron SDK into Python application on Linux. 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 wrappers.

This guide will help you get started using the precompiled Python wrappers.

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7.x

• PDFTron SDK for Linux:

64-bit for Linux 32-bit for Linux

Initial setup

1. Download the Python and Ruby prebuilt binaries. Make sure you download the right architecture for your Python interpreter.
2. Extract via tar xvzf PDFNetWrappersLinux64.tar.gz or tar xvzf PDFNetWrappersLinux32.tar.gz.
3. Get your PDFTron trial key.

Run the samples

Run a specific sample

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

Run all samples

1. To run all tests, navigate to /Samples and execute the runall_python file:

./runall_python.sh

The tests will run one by one.

Integrate 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.

Next step

Guides Samples

Troubleshooting

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