Use pdftk to Manipulating PDF Files

It is suggested that you use Python modules or Stirling-PDF instead of pdftk to manipulating PDFs for several reasons. First, even though pdftk is a great command-line tool, it is hard to remember its syntax. On the contratry, Python code is easy to read and understand (even though it is more verbose). Second, it is not easy to have pdftk installed and configured on macOS. If you prefer a GUI-based application for manipulating PDF files, Stirling-PDF is is a robust, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool using Docker.
Please refer to PyPDF2 Examples for a simple example of extracting PDF pages using the Python package PyPDF2. If you need to edit PDF pages, please refer to Editing PDF Files for possible tools. If you do have to stick with pdftk, below are concrete examples on how to use it.

Install pdftk on Ubuntu / Debian¶

wajig install pdftk-java

Fill in forms in an I-9 doc.
```
 :::bash
 # dump fields in the form (optional, for human examination only)
 pdftk i9.pdf dump_data_fields > fields.txt 
 # generate a FDF data file
 pdftk i9.pdf generate_fdf output data.fdf 
 # after fill in fileds in the FDF file, run the following command
 pdftk i9.pdf fill_form data.fdf output i9_2.pdf
```
If the PDF form to fill in using pdftk is encrypted, you have to decrypt it first. SmallPDF is a good online service, which can help you unlock PDF documents if you don’t have the encryption password.
Notice that some PDF forms (e.g., time card, I-9 form, etc.) cannot be saved (only a blank copy can be saved). after filled in using Adobe Reader. pdftk provides a solution to this problem.
Extract pages (from 149 to 186) from the PDF file “training.pdf” as “chap_05.pdf”
```
 :::bash
 pdftk training.pdf cat 149-186 output chap_05.pdf
```
Combine all my i-20s (all PDF files in current directory) into a single file.
```
 :::bash
 pdftk *.pdf cat output i-20_all.pdf
```

Combine scaned pages into the right order.

 :::bash
 pdftk A=20141206171918820.pdf B=20141206171951015.pdf cat A1 B1 A2-3 output i-20.pdf

Rotate the first PDF page to 90 degrees clockwise

 :::bash
 pdftk in.pdf cat 1east 2-end output out.pdf

Rotate all pages in the second PDF file to 180 degrees

 :::bash
 pdftk A=m11.pdf B=m25.pdf cat A Bsouth output comed.pdf

Rotate an entire PDF document to 180 degrees

 :::bash
 pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endsouth output out.pdf