Streamlining PDF Generation with PDFShift and Python

PDF generation is a common task in many applications, whether it’s generating invoices, reports, or saving web pages as PDF documents. In Python, the PDFShift package provides a simple and convenient way to interact with the PDFShift API for generating high-quality PDF files.

In this article, we will explore how to integrate PDFShift with other popular Python software products such as requests to streamline the PDF generation process and enhance your workflow.

Installation and Configuration

Before getting started, make sure you have Python 2.6+ and the requests library installed. To install the PDFShift package, run the following command:

#bash
pip install --upgrade pdfshift

Now, let’s configure the package with your api_key which you can obtain from your PDFShift account:

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

Example Implementations

Example 1: Generate PDF from URL

Sometimes, you need to generate a PDF from a webpage. With PDFShift, you can easily achieve this by providing the URL of the webpage. Here’s an example:

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert('https://www.example.com')

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Example 2: Convert HTML to PDF

If you have HTML content that you want to convert to a PDF, PDFShift makes it a breeze. Here’s an example:

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

document = open('invoice.html', 'r')
document_content = document.read()
document.close()

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(document_content)
with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Example 3: Customizing PDF Output

PDFShift allows you to customize the generated PDF by adding CSS, headers, footers, watermarks, and even applying protection. Here are a few examples of how you can take advantage of these features:

Custom CSS

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(
    'https://www.example.com',
    css="https://www.example.com/public/css/print.css"
)

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Custom HTTP Headers

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(
    'https://httpbin.org/headers',
    headers={
        'X-Original-Header': 'Awesome value',
        'user-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0'
    }
)

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Adding Watermark

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(
    'https://www.example.com',
    watermark={
        'image': 'https://pdfshift.io/static/img/logo.png',
        'offset_x': 50,
        'offset_y': '100px',
        'rotate': 45
    }
)

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Custom Header or Footer

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(
    'https://www.example.com',
    footer={
        'source': '
Page {{page}} of {{total}}
',
        'spacing': '50px'
    }
)

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Protecting the generated PDF

#python
import pdfshift
pdfshift.api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

binary_file = pdfshift.convert(
    'https://www.example.com',
    protection={
        'user_password': 'user',
        'owner_password': 'owner',
        'no_print': True
    }
)

with open('result.pdf', 'wb') as output:
    output.write(binary_file)

Advantages of Integration with PDFShift

Integrating PDFShift with other Python software products brings several advantages to your PDF generation workflow:

• Simplicity: PDFShift provides a simplified way to interact with the PDFShift API, making it easy to generate PDF files from URLs or HTML content.
• Customization: With PDFShift, you can easily customize your PDF output by adding CSS styles, headers, footers, watermarks, and applying protection.
• Reliability: PDFShift is built on a robust infrastructure, ensuring high-quality and reliable PDF generation.
• Scalability: PDFShift’s API is designed to handle high volumes of PDF generation requests, making it suitable for scalable applications.
• Compatibility: PDFShift works seamlessly with other Python software products such as requests, allowing you to leverage existing libraries and tools.

In conclusion, integrating PDFShift with Python and other software products empowers you to efficiently generate and customize PDF documents, adding value to your application or business.

Start streamlining your PDF generation workflow with PDFShift and elevate your document generation capabilities.