Introduction

PDF Generator API allows you easily generate transactional PDF documents and reduce the development and support costs by enabling your users to create and manage their document templates using a browser-based drag-and-drop document editor.

The PDF Generator API features a web API architecture, allowing you to code in the language of your choice. This API supports the JSON media type, and uses UTF-8 character encoding.

You can find our previous API documentation page with references to Simple and Signature authentication here.

Base URL

The base URL for all the API endpoints is https://us1.pdfgeneratorapi.com/api/v3

For example

• https://us1.pdfgeneratorapi.com/api/v3/templates
• https://us1.pdfgeneratorapi.com/api/v3/workspaces
• https://us1.pdfgeneratorapi.com/api/v3/templates/123123

Editor

PDF Generator API comes with a powerful drag & drop editor that allows to create any kind of document templates, from barcode labels to invoices, quotes and reports. You can find tutorials and videos from our Support Portal.

• Component specification
• Expression Language documentation
• Frequently asked questions and answers

Definitions

Organization

Organization is a group of workspaces owned by your account.

Workspace

Workspace contains templates. Each workspace has access to their own templates and organization default templates.

Master Workspace

Master Workspace is the main/default workspace of your Organization. The Master Workspace identifier is the email you signed up with.

Default Template

Default template is a template that is available for all workspaces by default. You can set the template access type under Page Setup. If template has "Organization" access then your users can use them from the "New" menu in the Editor.

Data Field

Data Field is a placeholder for the specific data in your JSON data set. In this example JSON you can access the buyer name using Data Field {paymentDetails::buyerName}. The separator between depth levels is :: (two colons). When designing the template you don’t have to know every Data Field, our editor automatically extracts all the available fields from your data set and provides an easy way to insert them into the template.

{    "documentNumber": 1,    "paymentDetails": {        "method": "Credit Card",        "buyerName": "John Smith"    },    "items": [        {            "id": 1,            "name": "Item one"        }    ]}

Authentication

The PDF Generator API uses JSON Web Tokens (JWT) to authenticate all API requests. These tokens offer a method to establish secure server-to-server authentication by transferring a compact JSON object with a signed payload of your account’s API Key and Secret. When authenticating to the PDF Generator API, a JWT should be generated uniquely by a server-side application and included as a Bearer Token in the header of each request.

Legacy Simple and Signature authentication

You can find our legacy documentation for Simple and Signature authentication here.

Accessing your API Key and Secret

You can find your API Key and API Secret from the Account Settings page after you login to PDF Generator API here.

Creating a JWT

JSON Web Tokens are composed of three sections: a header, a payload (containing a claim set), and a signature. The header and payload are JSON objects, which are serialized to UTF-8 bytes, then encoded using base64url encoding.

The JWT's header, payload, and signature are concatenated with periods (.). As a result, a JWT typically takes the following form:

{Base64url encoded header}.{Base64url encoded payload}.{Base64url encoded signature}

We recommend and support libraries provided on jwt.io. While other libraries can create JWT, these recommended libraries are the most robust.

Header

Property alg defines which signing algorithm is being used. PDF Generator API users HS256. Property typ defines the type of token and it is always JWT.

{  "alg": "HS256",  "typ": "JWT"}

Payload

The second part of the token is the payload, which contains the claims or the pieces of information being passed about the user and any metadata required. It is mandatory to specify the following claims:

• issuer (iss): Your API key
• subject (sub): Workspace identifier
• expiration time (exp): Timestamp (unix epoch time) until the token is valid. It is highly recommended to set the exp timestamp for a short period, i.e. a matter of seconds. This way, if a token is intercepted or shared, the token will only be valid for a short period of time.

{  "iss": "ad54aaff89ffdfeff178bb8a8f359b29fcb20edb56250b9f584aa2cb0162ed4a",  "sub": "demo.example@actualreports.com",  "exp": 1586112639}

Signature

To create the signature part you have to take the encoded header, the encoded payload, a secret, the algorithm specified in the header, and sign that. The signature is used to verify the message wasn't changed along the way, and, in the case of tokens signed with a private key, it can also verify that the sender of the JWT is who it says it is.

HMACSHA256(    base64UrlEncode(header) + "." +    base64UrlEncode(payload),    API_SECRET)

Putting all together

The output is three Base64-URL strings separated by dots. The following shows a JWT that has the previous header and payload encoded, and it is signed with a secret.

eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJhZDU0YWFmZjg5ZmZkZmVmZjE3OGJiOGE4ZjM1OWIyOWZjYjIwZWRiNTYyNTBiOWY1ODRhYTJjYjAxNjJlZDRhIiwic3ViIjoiZGVtby5leGFtcGxlQGFjdHVhbHJlcG9ydHMuY29tIn0.SxO-H7UYYYsclS8RGWO1qf0z1cB1m73wF9FLl9RCc1Q
// Base64 encoded header: eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9// Base64 encoded payload: eyJpc3MiOiJhZDU0YWFmZjg5ZmZkZmVmZjE3OGJiOGE4ZjM1OWIyOWZjYjIwZWRiNTYyNTBiOWY1ODRhYTJjYjAxNjJlZDRhIiwic3ViIjoiZGVtby5leGFtcGxlQGFjdHVhbHJlcG9ydHMuY29tIn0// Signature: SxO-H7UYYYsclS8RGWO1qf0z1cB1m73wF9FLl9RCc1Q

Testing with JWTs

You can create a temporary token in Account Settings page after you login to PDF Generator API. The generated token uses your email address as the subject (sub) value and is valid for 5 minutes. You can also use jwt.io to generate test tokens for your API calls. These test tokens should never be used in production applications.

Libraries and SDKs

Postman Collection

We have created a Postman Collection so you can easily test all the API endpoints wihtout developing and code. You can download the collection here or just click the button below.

Client Libraries

All our Client Libraries are auto-generated using OpenAPI Generator which uses the OpenAPI v3 specification to automatically generate a client library in specific programming language.

• PHP Client
• Java Client
• Ruby Client
• Python Client
• Javascript Client

We have validated the generated libraries, but let us know if you find any anomalies in the client code.

Error codes

401 - Unauthorized

403 - Forbidden

404 Entity not found

422 Unprocessable Entity