The template under the pages
Lay the document's pages over a PDF already made: a letterhead, a contract background, a signature sheet.
Summary
Many firms have a letterhead: the logo at the top, the address at the bottom, and a wide blank in between to write on. The same thing here, in digital form, and you may even supply three of them: one for the first page, one for the pages in between, one for the last — the signature sheet, for instance.
Technically
Written at the top level of a request, under
"templates"
templates names up to three template PDFs stamped under the pages, by page position: the start, the middle, the end. The bytes of each template arrive alongside the request, in a form part carrying exactly that name, from the same pool the placed pages are drawn from. The middle template carries one single page, repeated as many times as needed; the start and end templates may run to several. All three keys are optional: a request may give just one.
Request schema
-
templates— object, optional, absent by default. -
templates.start— string, optional. The name of the supplied part carrying the template laid under the document's first pages. -
templates.middle— string, optional. The name of the supplied part carrying the single-page template laid under the pages between first and last. A template of several pages is refused here. -
templates.end— string, optional. The name of the supplied part carrying the template laid under the document's last pages.
Each name refers to a part of the multipart/form-data body, alongside json_data. A name no part carries is refused. Bringing a page in from another document mid-page is a pdf_page item, which draws on the same pool of supplied parts.
A template is written into the document once, however many pages carry it: each of those pages refers to the same form. Laying one under a hundred pages does not copy its bytes a hundred times.
Content that does not fit carries on to the next page by itself, the way a table and a flowing text already do, and the middle template is laid under each of the pages it takes.
A page brought in from another document that shows more than ten thousand words is refused to a request carrying no licence key. Under the count the page is carried as it stands, text and all; above it, it is not. That limit is ours, not a rule of the format.
A whole request that creates a PDF
{
"templates": { "start": "letterhead" },
"standard_fonts": [{ "name": "sans", "face": "helvetica" }],
"items": [
{
"type": "text",
"rect": { "llx": 60, "lly": 640, "urx": 535, "ury": 700 },
"content": ["Dear Madam,\nThank you for your order of 4 August."],
"font": "sans",
"font_size": 11,
"leading": 15
}
]
}The sheet, and what is laid under it
The size of the pages A size of its own for certain pages The unit a page is measured in The areas a page states The shapes a page lays over what it draws Which way up a page is shown How a page arrives, and how long it stands How far a supplied PDF is allowed to unpack
Where to go next
Every JSON key of a request, in one page The other forty-one settings of a request