This page describes how to use the Pdfcrowd online API to convert web pages and HTML to PDF in PHP. The API is user-friendly and can be integrated into your application with just a few lines of code. Refer to HTML to PDF API for general information about the converter.
Check out other installation options such as Composer or GitHub.
Here are PHP examples for quickly getting started with the API. See more examples. We also have a video tutorial.
The credentials to access the API are your Pdfcrowd username and the API key. You can try out the API without registering using the following demo credentials:
demo
ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d
To get your personal API credentials, you can start a free API trial or buy the API license.
To get a quick idea of what the API output will look like, enter a web page or upload an HTML file using the form below. It will generate several API output previews with different conversion settings. You can then choose the one that looks best, and simply copy and paste the auto-generated API integration code into your PHP application.
The API enables conversion of a web page, a local HTML file, or a string containing HTML. Conversion output can be saved to to a local file, a stream object or a variable. See the conversion input section of the documentation for more details.
The table below lists the most common customizations. You can also interactively explore the API in the API Playground.
Page size | Change the page size with setPageSize or setPageDimensions . Pass -1 to setPageHeight to get a single page PDF containing the whole document. |
Page orientation | Change the page orientation to landscape with setOrientation. |
Page margins | Adjust the page margins with setPageMargins. |
Headers and footers |
Add headers and footers with
setHeaderHtml and
setFooterHtml.
Set the height with setFooterHeight
and setHeaderHeight.
You can learn more in this tutorial. |
Zoom | Scale the HTML contents with setScaleFactor. |
Hide or remove elements |
You can use the following classes in your HTML
code to hide or remove elements from the output:
|
Use @media print | You can switch to the print version of the page (if it exists) with setUsePrintMedia. |
Force page break |
You can force a page break with<div style="page-break-before:always"></div>
|
Avoid page break |
You can avoid a page break inside an element with
the following CSSth, td, img { page-break-inside:avoid }
|
Run custom JavaScript | You can use setOnLoadJavascript or setCustomJavascript to alter the HTML contents with a custom JavaScript. In addition to the standard browser APIs, the custom JavaScript code can use helper functions from our JavaScript library . |
Custom CSS styling |
You can alter CSS styling used during conversion
with a custom JavaScript or using the
pdfcrowd-body
CSS class, which is automatically set on the HTML
<body> element. You can, for example, set
the H1 height to 48px by adding the following line
to your CSS:
.pdfcrowd-body h1 { font-size: 48px; }
|
Add PDF signature | You can create PDF containing a digital signature field. Such PDF can be digitally signed in, for example, Adobe Acrobat or Preview. Learn more in Create Digital Signature in PDF . |
Fillable PDF form | You can create fillable PDF containing interactive fields and buttons. Learn more in Create Fillable PDF Form. |
HTML Templates | Add data to your HTML template and convert it to PDF. Learn more in HTML Template to PDF. |
It is recommended that you implement error handling to catch errors that the API may return, see the example code below. A list of status codes and their description can be found here.
try { // call the API } catch(\Pdfcrowd\Error $why) { // print the error error_log("Pdfcrowd Error: {$why}\n"); // print the error code error_log("Pdfcrowd Error Code: {$why->getCode()}\n"); // print the error message error_log("Pdfcrowd Error Message: {$why->getMessage()}\n"); }
libPdfcrowd.highlightHtmlElements
method call to visualize all HTML elements. See the
backgrounds example
,
borders example
and helper
JavaScript library
documentation.
Refer to the HTML to PDF PHP Reference for a description of all API methods.