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Version: API v2 Preview

Getting Started with Python

This tutorial downloads a known PDF, replaces Hello with Final on page 1, and writes the edited file to output.pdf. No account or API token is required. Anonymous output is watermarked.

1. Create a project​

mkdir pdfdancer-python-demo
cd pdfdancer-python-demo
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

2. Install PDFDancer​

python -m pip install pdfdancer-client-python==2.0.0

Python 3.10 or newer is required.

curl -L https://docs.pdfdancer.com/files/v2/pdfdancer-v2-quickstart.pdf -o input.pdf

3. Create edit_pdf.py​

from pathlib import Path
from pdfdancer import PDFDancer, TextReplaceRequest

with PDFDancer.open(pdf_data=Path("input.pdf")) as pdf:
    response = pdf.page(1).text().replace(
        TextReplaceRequest.literal("Hello", "Final").build()
    )

    if response.matched == 0:
        raise RuntimeError("The source text was not found")
    if response.errors:
        raise RuntimeError(f"The edit failed: {response.errors}")

    pdf.save("output.pdf")

pdf.page(1).text() restricts the edit to page 1. Use pdf.text() to search the whole document, optionally limiting the edit to specified page numbers.

4. Run it​

python edit_pdf.py

The program exits without output when the edit succeeds. Open output.pdf and confirm that Hello became Final. If the script reports that the text was not found, see When visible text does not match.

Next, learn about text targeting and responses or other content types.