Merge PDFs using Python

mergePDFs.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Jacob Salmela
# Make PyPDF2 is installed: sudo easy_install PyPDF2
# https://jacobsalmela.com/2016/08/12/merge-pdfs-natively-with-a-right-click-in-os-x/
import sys
import os
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileMerger, PdfFileReader

merger = PdfFileMerger()

# Get the folder of the first file and that's where the merged PDF will go
dirname = os.path.dirname(sys.argv[1])

for f in sys.argv[1:]:
    filename = os.path.basename(f)
    print("Appending " + filename + "...")

    # Append each page to the merger
    merger.append(PdfFileReader(file(f, 'rb')))

    # Close the file to prevent duplicate pages from being appended
    file(f).close()

# Write all the appends to a new file
merger.write(os.path.join(dirname, "merged.pdf"))

`file(f).close() was causing a crash so I took it out in my version. I also made some modifications to improve path handling:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding=utf-8

# Jacob Palmela
# Make PyPDF2 is installed: sudo easy_install PyPDF2
# Automator action: http://jacobsalmela.com/merge-pdfs-natively-with-a-right-click-in-os-x/
import sys, os
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileMerger, PdfFileReader

merger = PdfFileMerger()

# Get the folder of the first file and that's where the merged PDF will go
dirname = os.path.dirname(sys.argv[1])

for f in sys.argv[1:]:
    filename = os.path.basename(f)
    print("Appending " + filename + "…")

    # Append each page to the merger
    merger.append(PdfFileReader(file(f, 'rb')))

# Write all the appends to a new file
merger.write(os.path.join(dirname, "merged.pdf"))

Did you guys ever figure out the problem with pages being doubled up if original PDFs have more than one page? I'm combining 1 & 3 pages, and getting 8 total in merged.pdf

-: line 3: import: command not found
-: line 4: import: command not found
from: can't read /var/mail/PyPDF2
-: -c: line 7: syntax error near unexpected token (' -: -c: line 7: merger = PdfFileMerger()'

How to fix it?

I'm getting an Import Error with PyPDF2, which I suspect is likely due to me having Python3 installed. Anybody know how to fix this? The usual methods did not work. (tried pip install, pip3 install, conda install, brew install)

Hmm, it's been so long since I even wrote this...

The code runs but i cant seem to find the location of my merged pdf. Can someone here help me please?

If you remove the get selected finder items from the workflow, those duplicates don't happen anymore. I updated my blog post to reflect that.

Thank you @jacobsalmela. I finally figured it out and then created a GUI version from your code. Thank you so much

NP. Glad it's still useful. I've been going through some of my old posts to fixup stuff like this.