Merging PDF Files

Merging of PDF files can be done in various ways of sophistication.

The easiest way, which this example shows, just imports the pages of the source files into the target file. This preserves the page contents themselves but nothing else.

For example, named destinations are not properly handled by the code. Sometimes other things like attached files or a document outline should also be preserved.

The hexapdf binary provides a command for merging files which does the merging in a more sophisticated way.

Usage:

ruby merging.rb INPUT1.PDF INPUT2.PDF ...

Code

require 'hexapdf'

target = HexaPDF::Document.new
ARGV.each do |file|
  pdf = HexaPDF::Document.open(file)
  pdf.pages.each {|page| target.pages << target.import(page)}
end
target.write("2.merging.pdf", optimize: true)