Script to generate a PDF in which each page is a layer of a SVG

pdf-from-svg-layers.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Parse CLI argument
INPUT_FILE=$1 # SVG file to export
TEMP_SVG_FILE="temp_$INPUT_FILE" # temporary SVG file, with all layers visible
OUTPUT_FILE="${INPUT_FILE%.*}.pdf" # output filename is the same as input — just changing .svg into .pdf

# Ensure each layer is visible
inkscape --actions=unhide-all --export-filename=$TEMP_SVG_FILE $INPUT_FILE

# Export one PDF per layer
inkscape --query-all $TEMP_SVG_FILE |  # get the list of object in the SVG file
    grep layer | # keep those that begins with 'layer' only
    awk -F "," "{print \$1}" | # extract the ID from each layer
    awk -v TEMP_SVG_FILE="$TEMP_SVG_FILE" '{print "inkscape --export-area-page --export-id " $1 " --export-id-only --export-filename temp_pdf_" sprintf("%03d", NR) ".pdf " TEMP_SVG_FILE }' | # for each layer print the command to print this layer only
    xargs -0 bash -c # Execute the previously printed commands

# Concatenate the generated one-page PDF into a single document
pdfunite temp_pdf_* $OUTPUT_FILE

# Delete tpmorary files
rm $TEMP_SVG_FILE
rm temp_pdf_*