Getting Started

wkhtmltopdf as a service gives you a REST api to create PDF documents from html without the headache of managing servers and capacity.

This guide will help you implement your html to pdf conversion.

Authentication#

You need an API key to make any conversion requests against our service. If you don't have one, you can get one for free below.

Building the request#

Authorization#

There are a couple ways to authorize your request.

Query parameter (auth)

https://wkhtmltopdfservice.com/api/convert-to-pdf?auth=wk_********

Bearer Token

POST https://wkhtmltopdfservice.com/api/convert-to-pdf
Authorization: Bearer wk_********

Body#

The request body can be any of the following formats:

JSON

Content-Type: application/json
{
    "html": string // optional
    "url":  string // optional (either html or url must be specified)
    "options": {}  // optional, see next page for complete list of options
}

WWW Form Encoded

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

html: string // optional
url:  string // optional (either html or url must be specified)
options: string of json-encoded data  // optional, see next page for complete list of options

Multipart Form Encoded

Content-Type: multipart/form-data

html: string // optional
url:  string // optional (either html or url must be specified)
options: string of json-encoded data  // optional, see next page for complete list of options

Responses#

Success

When your conversion is successful, the response will have the following format

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/pdf

...pdf document bytes

Failure

Failures will always have a status code >=400 and have an error of the following structure.

{
    "error": "string,required",
    "message": "string,optional",
    "stackTrace": "string,optional"
}

429

Failures with http status code 429 are caused by invalid API keys. If you make too many requests with an invalid API key you'll receive a 429.

Working Sample#

async function getReport() {

    // build report
    const result = await fetch("https://wkhtmltopdfservice.com/api/convert-to-pdf", {
        method: "POST",
        headers: {
              'Content-Type': 'application/json',
              'Authorization': 'Bearer wk_*************',
        },
        body: JSON.stringify({
            url: "https://mysite/the-report",
            options: {
                title: "My Report",
            }
        })
    });

    // check status code before touching response body
    if(result.status === 200) {
        return result.arrayBuffer();
    }

    let message = "";
    try {
        const js = await result.json();
        message = "Failed to generate report with message '" + js.error + "''"
    } catch (e) {
        message = "Failed to generate report with statusCode=" + result.status;
    }

    throw new Error(message);
}

* you'll need to use your own token in place of wk_*************