Merge PDF Files

Moodle Plugin for merging pdf files in a course.

The ‘Merge PDF Files’ plugin offers the user a convenient way by which they can merge the files (only PDF documents) in a Moodle course.

This plugin requires two external tools:

• PDFtk (short for PDF Toolkit) is a cross-platform tool for manipulating Portable Document Format (PDF) documents.
• LaTeX – A document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

The module is created and is currently being developed at IIT Bombay (India).

Installation

The 'mergefiles' folder is to be added under 'moodle/admin/tool' directory.

How to use?

After installing this plugin into moodle:

• Go to a particular course.

• Click on 'Settings' icon.

• The ‘Merge PDF files’ plugin link will appear in Course settings. Click on it.

• The plugin index page gives you a list of all the pdf files in that particular course.

• At the end of this page, you get a button labeled "Merge pdf files".

• On clicking this button, the user will get a merged pdf document of all the course files listed on that page.

• The user will be able to download the newly merged pdf file by clicking on the link provided.

• A table listing recently merged pdf documents will be displayed to the user. They can download the previously merged pdf document by clicking on the corresponding link.

Usage

Through this feature, now users will be able to merge pdf files in a particular course from within moodle itself.

Work in progress

The following functionality is being incorporated into this plugin wherein:

• user can select only a few/all pdf files,

• user can shufffle the listed pdf files.