iTextSharp to merge PDF files in PowerShell - powershell

Question

I have a folder which contains thousands of PDF files. I need to filter through these files based on file name (which will group these into 2 or more PDF's) and then merge these 2 more more PDF's into 1 PDF.
I'm OK with group the files but not sure the best way of then merging these into 1 PDF. I have researched iTextSharp but have been unable to get this to work in PowerShell.
Is iTextSharp the best way of doing this? Any help with the code for this would be much appreciated.
Many thanks
Paul

Answer 1

Have seen a few of these PowerShell-tagged questions that are also tagged with itextsharp, and always wondered why answers are given in .NET, which can be very confusing unless the person asking the question is proficient in PowerShell to begin with. Anyway, here's a simple working PowerShell script to get you started:
$workingDirectory = Split-Path -Parent $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path;
$pdfs = ls $workingDirectory -recurse | where {-not $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.Extension -imatch "^\.pdf$"};
[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom(
[System.IO.Path]::Combine($workingDirectory, 'itextsharp.dll')
);
$output = [System.IO.Path]::Combine($workingDirectory, 'output.pdf');
$fileStream = New-Object System.IO.FileStream($output, [System.IO.FileMode]::OpenOrCreate);
$document = New-Object iTextSharp.text.Document;
$pdfCopy = New-Object iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfCopy($document, $fileStream);
$document.Open();
foreach ($pdf in $pdfs) {
$reader = New-Object iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader($pdf.FullName);
$pdfCopy.AddDocument($reader);
$reader.Dispose();
}
$pdfCopy.Dispose();
$document.Dispose();
$fileStream.Dispose();
To test:
Create an empty directory.
Copy code above into a Powershell script file in the directory.
Copy the itextsharp.dll to the directory.
Put some PDF files in the directory.
Not sure how you intend to group filter the PDFs based on file name, or if that's your intention (couldn't tell if you meant just pick out PDFs by extension), but that shouldn't be too hard to add.
Good luck. :)