pdf-pages-count

Fast, dependency-free page count extractor for PDF files in Node.js.

Install

npm i pdf-pages-count

Usage

CommonJS:

const { countPdfPages, countPdfPagesSync } = require("pdf-pages-count");

(async () => {
  const pages = await countPdfPages("/path/to/file.pdf");
  console.log(pages);
})();

const fs = require("fs");
const buf = fs.readFileSync("/path/to/file.pdf");
const pages2 = countPdfPagesSync(buf);
console.log(pages2);

ESM / TypeScript:

import { countPdfPages, countPdfPagesSync } from "pdf-pages-count";

const pages = await countPdfPages("/path/to/file.pdf");
const pages2 = countPdfPagesSync(new Uint8Array(/* ... */));

How it works

• Tries classic xref parsing to read /Root -> /Pages -> /Count.
• Falls back to scanning for /Type /Pages and nearby /Count N.
• Additionally scans deflated streams (e.g., object streams) for those markers.
• As a last resort, counts occurrences of /Type /Page across plain and deflated content.

Limitations

• Encrypted PDFs are not supported.
• Some exotic PDFs may still evade detection. Open an issue with a sample if that happens.

License

MIT