Statically Compile Pdftk for Heroku. Need to Split PDF into Single Page Files

Statically compile pdftk for Heroku. Need to split PDF into single page files

Unfortunately Heroku keeps stripping out magic to add flexibility. As a result it feels more and more like the days when I used to manage and maintain my own servers. There is no easy solution. My "monkey patch" is to send the file to a server that I can install PDFTK, process the file, and send it back. Not great, but it works. Having to deal with this defeats the purpose of using heroku.

Ruby - using pdftk to split a multi page pdf into many single page pdf's?

You can try it using the combine_pdf gem:

require 'combine_pdf'

pages = CombinePDF.load("my_pdf.pdf").pages;
i = 0
pages.each do |page|
   pdf = CombinePDF.new
   pdf << page
   pdf.save("#{i}.pdf")
   i+=1
end

The combine_pdf gem (I'm the author) is a native Ruby solution, so you don't have to worry about pdftk's installation and requirements.

PDFTK Script to split all files within a folder - noob

Looking at this again, I can't see any reason why you can't do this with simple shell programming. Something like:

for %s in (c:\test*.pdf) do pdftk %s burst output c:\pdftest\%~ns_%02d.pdf

ought to work.

How to set up pdftk or iText to work with Rails 3 on Heroku?

You can use pdftk on Heroku – it's pre-installed. You use it by shelling out to it as a command-line program from within your Ruby app.

For most pdftk commands, you will use Tempfiles. Interpolate the Tempfile#paths in the arguments to pdftk.

`pdftk #{subcommand}`
raise Exception unless $?.success?

In some cases, you will be able to pipe data in and out using stdin and stdout rather than Tempfiles.

input = ...
output = IO.popen "pdftk #{subcommand}", 'w+b' do |io|
  io.write input
  io.flush
  io.close_write
  io.read
end

How to add pdftk to Heroku Cedar app?

I've got this working now, and a publicly available version of a custom Heroku Ruby buildpack with pdftk is here:
https://github.com/millie/heroku-buildpack-ruby-pdftk

Be sure to see the instructions in the README.

Precompiled version of pdftk for Heroku's Cedar stack is available here:
https://github.com/millie/pdftk-source

Hope this saves someone else some trouble!

Insert a blank page between each existing page in a PDF document

Okay I did it myself using PHP and FPDI/FPDF:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
require_once('fpdi/fpdf.php');
require_once('fpdi/fpdi.php');

// Format für die einzelnen Folien:
$format = 'L';  // Entweder '' (horizontal) oder 'L' (Landscape!)

// Verzeichnis lesen
foreach(glob('infiles/*.pdf') as $file)
{
    $filename = basename($file);
    $fileout = 'outfiles/' . $filename;

    // Ausgabe-PDF
    $out = new FPDI();

    // Vorhandenes PDF einlesen
    $pagecount = $out->setSourceFile($file);

    // Alle Seiten nacheinander importieren
    for($i = 1; $i <= $pagecount; $i++)
    {
        // Importiere Seite
        $tpl = $out->importPage($i); // , '/MediaBox'

        // Vorhandene Seite
        $out->addPage($format);
        $out->useTemplate($tpl);

        if($i < $pagecount)
        {
            // Leere Seite anfügen (nur nicht am Ende)
            $out->addPage($format);
        }
    }

    $out->Output($fileout);
}

all files in the subdirectory 'infiles' will get blank Pages inserted and saved to 'outfiles' with the same filename!

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