Summary
Creates an empty PDFDocument object in memory.
Discussion
The PDFDocumentCreate function receives a path to determine the save location and file name where a new PDF file will be created. However, no PDF file will be created until subsequent steps are performed to insert or append pages and save the PDF file. PDFDocumentCreate will return a PDFDocument object that your script should then manipulate and save. A common scenario for using this function is the creation of a PDF map book. The steps typically involve exporting a number of separate PDF files from map documents, creating a new PDFDocument object, appending content from the exported PDF files and other documents, and saving the final PDF map book.
Please note that it is not possible to create blank PDF files, nor does the PDFDocumentCreate function add any blank pages to the document contents. For the saveAndClose method to successfully create a file, content must be added to the PDFDocument object using the appendPages or insertPages methods.
For more discussion on how to create map books, see the Building Map Books with ArcGIS help topic.
Syntax
PDFDocumentCreate (pdf_path)
| Parameter | Explanation | Data Type |
pdf_path | A string that specifies the path and file name for the resulting PDF file when the saveAndClose method is called. | String |
Code sample
This script will create a new PDF document, append the contents of three separate PDF documents, and save the resulting PDF file.
import arcpy, os
#Set file name and remove if it already exists
pdfPath = r"C:\Project\ParcelAtlasMapBook.pdf"
if os.path.exists(pdfPath):
os.remove(pdfPath)
#Create the file and append pages
pdfDoc = arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate(pdfPath)
pdfDoc.appendPages(r"C:\Project\Title.pdf")
pdfDoc.appendPages(r"C:\Project\ParcelAtlas.pdf")
pdfDoc.appendPages(r"C:\Project\ContactInfo.pdf")
#Commit changes and delete variable reference
pdfDoc.saveAndClose()
del pdfDoc