#  `dump_bookmarks`

Extract PDF bookmarks into YAML or JSON
## Usage
> pdftl `<input>` `dump_bookmarks` `[json]` `[no_resolve]` `[output` `<output>]`

## Details
Extracts the document's Table of Contents (bookmarks) into a highly readable
and editable YAML format (or JSON).

This faithful extraction preserves both the hierarchical structure and the
complex properties of your bookmarks. The resulting file can be easily edited
in any text editor and applied back to the same (or a different) PDF using
the [`update_bookmarks`](<update_bookmarks.md>) operation.

### Supported Bookmark Properties
Each bookmark node is represented as a dictionary (key-value mapping). The
extractor natively supports and outputs the following properties:

* **`title`**: The display text of the bookmark.
* **`page`**: The 1-indexed target page number.
* **`children`**: A nested list of sub-bookmarks to maintain outline hierarchy.
* **`color`**: An RGB array for the bookmark text color (e.g., `[1.0, 0.0, 0.0]` for red).
* **`bold`** / **`italic`**: Boolean flags for text styling (`true` or `false`).
* **`uri`**: An external web link (used if the bookmark points to a URL rather than a page).
* **`dest`**: A string reference to a Named Destination embedded inside the PDF.
* **`view`**: The precise zoom/viewport array (e.g., `["XYZ", 0, 700, 2.5]`, `["FitH", 500]`).

### Skipping Destination Resolution
By default, named destinations are automatically resolved into exact `page` and `view` parameters
to make the data more immediately useful. If you want to skip this step and only output the
original `dest` names without deriving their page targets, pass the `no_resolve` flag.

This may be useful if you want to edit the output from `dump_bookmarks` and pass it to the
[`update_bookmarks`](<update_bookmarks.md>) operation. See the [`update_bookmarks`](<update_bookmarks.md>) help for rules on `dest` versus `page` and
`view` precedence.

### Format Example
```yaml
- title: Chapter 1
  page: 1
  bold: true
  children:
    - title: Sub-section A
      page: 2
      view: ["FitH", 800]
    - title: Important Chart
      page: 3
      color: [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]
- title: External Resources
  uri: [https://example.com](https://example.com)
```

### Dependency note

YAML extraction requires the `pyyaml` library. If it is not installed, you can
install it via `pip install pdftl[yaml-bookmarks]`, or simply use the `json`
flag to extract using Python's standard JSON library instead.
## Examples

> Print YAML bookmark data to standard output
```
pdftl in.pdf dump_bookmarks
```

> Dump YAML bookmark data to bookmarks.yaml
```
pdftl in.pdf dump_bookmarks output bookmarks.yaml
```

> Dump YAML bookmarks, keeping named destinations unresolved
```
pdftl in.pdf dump_bookmarks no_resolve output bookmarks.yaml
```

> Dump JSON bookmark data to bookmarks.json
```
pdftl in.pdf dump_bookmarks json output bookmarks.json
```


**Tags**: info, metadata, bookmarks

*Source: pdftl.operations.dump_bookmarks*

*Read online: [https://pdftl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/operations/dump_bookmarks.html](https://pdftl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/operations/dump_bookmarks.html)*

*Type: Operation*