Integration guide

How to integrate Airpdf into your application — from signup to your first production PDF in under 10 minutes.

This guide is for customers of the Airpdf API. If you’re developing on Airpdf itself, see development.md.

1 — Create your workspace

1. Go to app.airpdf.io/auth/register-tenant
2. Fill in: workspace code (lowercase, e.g. acme), company name, admin email, password
3. Confirm via the email link
4. Land on /<your-code>/app — the backoffice dashboard

Your workspace gets:

• A 14-day trial on the Free plan (50 PDFs/month, 5 templates, 1 API key)
• Two API key environments: live and test
• A managed Wasabi bucket for generated PDFs (Bring Your Own S3 optional)

2 — Generate your first API key

1. Backoffice → API Keys → + New key
2. Pick environment:
   • airpdf_test_* — sandbox, doesn’t count against monthly quota
   • airpdf_live_* — production, counts toward your plan
3. Copy the token immediately — it’s shown once, then only the SHA-256 hash is stored

airpdf_test_AbCdEf1234567890aBcDeF1234567890

Store it in your secrets manager (.env, AWS Secrets Manager, 1Password, etc.). Never commit to git.

3 — Build your first template

Visual editor (recommended)

1. Backoffice → Templates → + New → pick a starter (Invoice / Report / Letter / Badge / etc.)
2. Edit the JSX in the REPL editor — left pane is code, right pane is live PDF
3. Define your variables in the Variables drawer at the bottom (JSON Schema)
4. Publish — the template becomes addressable by slug via the API

Variables and interpolation

In template content, use {{customer.name}} syntax:

<Document>
  <Page size="A4" style={{ padding: 32 }}>
    <Text style={{ fontSize: 24, fontWeight: 700 }}>
      Invoice for {{customer.name}}
    </Text>
    <Text>Total: €{{total}}</Text>
  </Page>
</Document>

Define matching variables schema (JSON Schema):

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "customer": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": { "name": { "type": "string" } },
      "required": ["name"]
    },
    "total": { "type": "number" }
  },
  "required": ["customer", "total"]
}

When a render request fails schema validation, the API returns 422 with the violating field path in details.

See template-schema.md for the full primitives reference.

4 — Render a PDF

Option A — REST (any language)

curl -X POST https://api.airpdf.io/api/v1/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer airpdf_test_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "template": "invoice",
    "data": {
      "customer": { "name": "Acme Inc." },
      "total": 99
    }
  }' \
  -o invoice.pdf

Option B — Official SDK (Node, Python, Go, Ruby — Tier 1)

npm install @airpdf/sdk

import Airpdf from '@airpdf/sdk';
import { writeFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const client = new Airpdf({ apiKey: process.env.AIRPDF_API_KEY! });

const result = await client.render({
  template: 'invoice',
  data: { customer: { name: 'Acme Inc.' }, total: 99 },
});

if (result.kind === 'binary') {
  await writeFile('invoice.pdf', result.pdf);
}

See ../sdks/README.md for all 12 supported languages.

5 — Choose sync vs async

Sync (default)

Returns 200 application/pdf with the bytes inline. Hard timeout 25s.

Sync + URL

curl -X POST .../render -d '{..., "response": "url"}' -L -o invoice.pdf

Server returns 303 + Location: <presigned-url>. The presigned URL is valid for 1 hour by default.

Async

curl -X POST .../render -d '{..., "async": true, "webhook_url": "https://your-app.com/airpdf"}'
# → {"id":"01939e...","status":"pending","poll_url":"/api/v1/render/01939e..."}

Then either poll GET /api/v1/render/:id until status is terminal, or wait for the webhook delivery (see next section).

6 — Webhooks (signed)

Airpdf delivers a signed POST to your webhook_url when an async render finishes. Use the helpers in any official SDK to verify the signature in constant time.

Headers

X-Airpdf-Event: render.succeeded
X-Airpdf-Delivery: 019398...
X-Airpdf-Timestamp: 1714780800
X-Airpdf-Signature: sha256=8b7d3...
Content-Type: application/json

Payload

{
  "id": "01939e6b-d6f4-7c4e-9c8f-2b1a4f5e6d7c",
  "status": "succeeded",
  "duration_ms": 412,
  "bytes": 18324,
  "artifact_id": "01939e6b-..."
}

Verification (Node SDK)

import express from 'express';
import { verifyWebhook, AirpdfWebhookVerificationError } from '@airpdf/sdk';

const app = express();

app.post(
  '/airpdf',
  express.raw({ type: 'application/json' }), // RAW body — do NOT json-parse first
  (req, res) => {
    try {
      verifyWebhook({
        body: req.body,
        signature: req.header('x-airpdf-signature')!,
        timestamp: req.header('x-airpdf-timestamp')!,
        secret: process.env.AIRPDF_WEBHOOK_SECRET!,
      });
    } catch (err) {
      if (err instanceof AirpdfWebhookVerificationError) {
        return res.status(401).end();
      }
      throw err;
    }

    const event = JSON.parse(req.body.toString('utf8'));
    // → process event
    res.status(204).end();
  },
);

Webhook secret

Each tenant has a single webhook secret derived from the workspace.

v0.x: secret is shared with us. v1.x: we’ll publish it in backoffice → API Keys → Webhook secret with rotation support.

7 — Bring your own storage (optional)

By default Airpdf stores generated PDFs on our managed Wasabi bucket. To route PDFs to your S3-compatible bucket:

1. Backoffice → Storage → choose provider (Amazon S3 / MinIO / Wasabi / Cloudflare R2)
2. Enter endpoint, region, bucket name, access key, secret key
3. Save → Airpdf runs a put + delete test object to verify
4. From the next render onward, PDFs upload to your bucket; presigned URLs point to it

Credentials are encrypted at rest (AES-GCM via Cloak). They’re decrypted in-memory only at upload time.

8 — Quotas + plans

429 (rate limit) returns Retry-After seconds. 402 (quota exhausted on Free) cannot be retried until the next billing cycle.

9 — Test mode vs live mode

Both keys hit the same endpoint. Discriminate in your client code via env var.

10 — Production checklist

Before flipping to airpdf_live_*:

• Verified webhook signature with the Node SDK (or equivalent)
• Webhook endpoint is HTTPS + reachable
• Retried at least one quota_exceeded (429) and one render_failed (500)
• Tested template variables schema with deliberately invalid data → expect 422 with details
• Confirmed PDFs render correctly across all expected variants (locale, currency, item counts, line wrap)
• Set up monitoring on render duration p95 (alert on > 2 s)
• Have a fallback plan if Airpdf is unreachable (queue + retry, or degrade UX gracefully)

Need help?

• 📖 API reference and OpenAPI spec
• 🧪 Postman collection — import to test interactively
• 📚 Template schema reference
• 🛠 SDKs — 12 official languages
• 📧 hello@airpdf.io — we reply within 24h on paid plans