How can I rotate every page in a PDF with Python / PyPDF4?

Question

I scanned a bunch of papers into a pdf but they seem to all be rotated, is there a way to rotate the pages with python?

I did see the question in Python - Batch rotate pdf with PyPDF2 but am looking for a more generic solution.

Answer 1

The best resource for PyPDF4 documentation at the time of this writing is PyPDF4's sample code - https://github.com/claird/PyPDF4/blob/master/samplecode/basic_features.py

Looking at that one can write a simple script to do this:

# pdf_rotate_every_page.py

from PyPDF4 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter
from sys import argv, path, stderr

from os.path import abspath, basename, dirname, join

USAGE = "Rotate every page in a PDF. Call script with single pdf file as input argument"

def main():
    output_writer = PdfFileWriter()

    if len(argv) < 2:
        print(USAGE)
        exit(1)
    else:
        inputpath = argv[1].strip()
        filename = basename(inputpath)[:-4]

        if len(argv) > 2:
            output = argv[2].strip()

    with open(inputpath, "rb") as inputf:
        pdfOne = PdfFileReader(inputf)
        numPages = pdfOne.numPages

        for i in list(range(0, numPages)):
            page = pdfOne.getPage(i).rotateClockwise(180)
            output_writer.addPage(page)

        with open(filename + "_rotated.pdf", "wb") as outfile:
            output_writer.write(outfile)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()