Quickstart

Generate your first PDF in under 5 minutes. You'll call the API, poll for the result, and download the file.

Prerequisites: a PDFox account and an API key. Create one here — it takes 30 seconds.

What you'll build

You'll send a template ID and a JSON data payload to the Generate PDF endpoint. PDFox renders the PDF asynchronously and returns a signed download URL when it's ready.

Steps

Submit a generate job

Send templateId + data to POST /v1/generate. The response contains a jobId — generation is asynchronous.

Poll for completion

Call GET /v1/jobs/:jobId every 1–2 seconds until status is completed or failed.

Download the PDF

The completed job contains a signed downloadUrl. Fetch it directly or redirect your user to it — the URL expires after 1 hour.

(Optional) Set up a webhook

Instead of polling, register a webhook URL and PDFox will POST a job.completed event when the PDF is ready. See Webhooks.

Next steps

Authentication — understand API key scopes
Create a template — build your own template in the visual editor
Webhooks — avoid polling entirely
Full API reference — all parameters for the generate endpoint

curl https://api.pdfox.com/v1/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "templateId": "tpl_demo_invoice",
    "data": {
      "company": "Acme Corp",
      "invoiceNumber": "INV-001",
      "total": 1250.00
    }
  }'

curl https://api.pdfox.com/v1/jobs/JOB_ID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

curl -L "DOWNLOAD_URL" -o invoice.pdf