Multipage PDF

This is a demo of creating a pdf file with several pages, as well as adding metadata and annotations to pdf files.

If you want to use a multipage pdf file using LaTeX, you need to use from matplotlib.backends.backend_pgf import PdfPages. This version however does not support attach_note.

import datetime
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.backends.backend_pdf import PdfPages
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Create the PdfPages object to which we will save the pages:
# The with statement makes sure that the PdfPages object is closed properly at
# the end of the block, even if an Exception occurs.
with PdfPages('multipage_pdf.pdf') as pdf:
    plt.figure(figsize=(3, 3))
    plt.plot(range(7), [3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2], 'r-o')
    plt.title('Page One')
    pdf.savefig()  # saves the current figure into a pdf page
    plt.close()

    # if LaTeX is not installed or error caught, change to `False`
    plt.rcParams['text.usetex'] = True
    plt.figure(figsize=(8, 6))
    x = np.arange(0, 5, 0.1)
    plt.plot(x, np.sin(x), 'b-')
    plt.title('Page Two')
    pdf.attach_note("plot of sin(x)")  # attach metadata (as pdf note) to page
    pdf.savefig()
    plt.close()

    plt.rcParams['text.usetex'] = False
    fig = plt.figure(figsize=(4, 5))
    plt.plot(x, x ** 2, 'ko')
    plt.title('Page Three')
    pdf.savefig(fig)  # or you can pass a Figure object to pdf.savefig
    plt.close()

    # We can also set the file's metadata via the PdfPages object:
    d = pdf.infodict()
    d['Title'] = 'Multipage PDF Example'
    d['Author'] = 'Jouni K. Sepp\xe4nen'
    d['Subject'] = 'How to create a multipage pdf file and set its metadata'
    d['Keywords'] = 'PdfPages multipage keywords author title subject'
    d['CreationDate'] = datetime.datetime(2009, 11, 13)
    d['ModDate'] = datetime.datetime.today()