n8n-nodes-pdfco

This is an n8n community node that enables you to integrate PDF.co's powerful PDF processing capabilities into your n8n workflows. PDF.co is a comprehensive PDF processing API that allows you to convert, merge, split, and manipulate PDF documents programmatically.

n8n is a fair-code licensed workflow automation platform.

Installation
Operations
Credentials
Usage
Resources
Version history

Installation

Community Nodes (Recommended)

For users on n8n v0.187+, you can install this node directly from the n8n Community Nodes panel in the n8n editor:

1. Open your n8n editor
2. Go to Settings > Community Nodes
3. Search for "n8n-nodes-pdfco"
4. Click Install
5. Reload the editor

Manual Installation

You can also install this node manually:

1. Navigate to your n8n installation directory
2. Run the following command:

npm install n8n-nodes-pdfco

3. Restart your n8n server

Operations

This node provides comprehensive PDF processing capabilities through PDF.co's API. Here are the available features:

1. AI-Powered Document Processing

• AI Invoice Parser: Extract data from invoices using AI-powered parsing

2. URL/HTML to PDF Conversion

• URL to PDF
• HTML to PDF
• HTML Template to PDF

3. PDF Merging

• Merge multiple PDFs into one
• Support for merging from different file formats (merge2)

4. PDF Splitting

• Split by page number
• Split by search text
• Split by barcode

5. Document to PDF Conversion

• Document to PDF (RTF, DOC, DOCX, TXT)
• Spreadsheet to PDF (CSV, XLS, XLSX, TXT Spreadsheet)
• Image to PDF (JPG, PNG, TIFF)
• Email to PDF (MSG or EML)

6. PDF to Other Formats

• PDF to CSV
• PDF to HTML
• PDF to Images (JPG, PNG, TIFF, WEBP)
• PDF to JSON
• PDF to Text
• PDF to Excel (XLS/XLSX)
• PDF to XML

7. PDF Modification

• Add text annotations
• Add images to PDF documents
• Fill interactive PDF forms with data
• Extract PDF metadata
• Get form field information

8. PDF Optimization

• Compress PDF files
• Optimize PDF for web or storage
• Remove password protection
• Add password protection
• Rotate pages in PDF documents
• Remove specific pages from PDF

9. PDF Search and Text Operations

• Search for text within PDF documents
• Search and delete text
• Search and replace text
• Search and replace with image

10. Barcode Operations

• Extract barcode data from PDFs
• Generate barcodes in PDFs

11. PDF OCR and Searchability

• Make scanned PDF searchable (OCR)
• Make searchable PDF unsearchable

12. File Management

• Standard file upload
• Create file URL from input text/content
• Upload from Base64 encoded data

Credentials

To use this node, you need a PDF.co API key. Here's how to get started:

1. Sign up for a PDF.co account at https://pdf.co
2. Navigate to your dashboard and obtain your API key
3. In n8n, add your PDF.co credentials by providing your API key

Usage

This node allows you to automate PDF processing tasks in your n8n workflows. Here are some common use cases:

• Process invoices using AI-powered parsing
• Automatically convert HTML reports to PDF
• Merge multiple PDF documents into a single file
• Extract text from PDF documents for data processing
• Add watermarks to PDF documents
• Compress PDF files to reduce size
• Secure PDFs with password protection
• Convert various document formats to PDF
• Extract data from PDFs to other formats
• Manage and modify PDF documents programmatically

Example: Get PDF information from a public URL

This example creates a simple workflow that reads metadata from a PDF file and returns the PDF.co result URL and extracted metadata.

1. Add a Manual Trigger node.
2. Add the PDF.co API node after the trigger.
3. In the PDF.co node, configure:
   • Authentication: API Key
   • Credential: select your PDF.co API key credential
   • Action: PDF Information & Form Fields
   • PDF URL: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf
   • Extract Fillable Fields: false
4. Execute the workflow.

The node sends the URL to PDF.co and returns a JSON item similar to:

{
  "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/.../result.json",
  "body": {
    "PageCount": 1,
    "Encrypted": false,
    "PasswordProtected": false,
    "Title": "Dummy PDF file"
  },
  "duration": 123
}

You can use the same pattern for other operations: choose the required Action, provide the source file URL or uploaded file URL, then pass the returned JSON fields to the next n8n node.

For detailed examples and workflow templates, visit our documentation.

Resources

• n8n community nodes documentation
• PDF.co API Documentation
• PDF.co Pricing

Version history

1.0.0

• Initial release with comprehensive PDF processing capabilities
• Full integration with PDF.co API services
• Support for all core PDF operations including conversion, merging, and modification

1.0.1

• Enhanced documentation with improved installation and usage instructions

1.0.2

• Improved code stability and performance
• Enhanced error handling and response management

1.0.3

• Improved code stability and performance

1.0.4

• AI Invoice Parser: Added support for custom field extraction, enabling more flexible and tailored data parsing.
• Added user-friendly descriptions for all PDF.co modules to help users better understand each feature's capabilities

1.0.5

• Search PDF/Convert From PDF: Added support for the Inline option, enabling direct file output
• Barcode Generator: Resolved an issue affecting barcode generation functionality.
• Updated description links to point to new dedicated documentation

1.0.6

• AI Invoice Parser: Clearer field descriptions and helpful usage hints

1.0.7

• Added n8n Connect support by moving the PDF.co API base URL into credentials, allowing n8n to inject a proxied base URL at runtime
• Added a hidden credentials baseUrl field that defaults to https://api.pdf.co
• Updated credential testing to use the credentials-provided base URL
• Bumped the node typeVersion to 1.1 for fresh installs while preserving compatibility with existing typeVersion 1 nodes

1.0.8

• Fixed n8n verification metadata

1.0.9

• Added PDF.co OAuth2 authentication support alongside the existing API key authentication
• Registered the OAuth2 credential type in the n8n package metadata
• Removed the preinstall lifecycle script to avoid blocking n8n package verification with package-manager enforcement
• Replaced deprecated this.helpers.request() calls with this.helpers.httpRequest()
• Updated the node label from PDF.co Api to PDF.co API
• Normalized Split PDF option descriptions to sentence case
• Improved PDF.co job polling by using local polling delay instead of the /v1/delay API endpoint and adding a 30-minute timeout
• Removed SSL certificate validation bypass from presigned upload requests

1.0.10

• Updated PDF.co API requests to use n8n authenticated HTTP helpers instead of deprecated or manually authenticated request helpers
• Replaced the deprecated OAuth2 request helper with httpRequestWithAuthentication() for OAuth user info lookups
• Switched job polling delay to n8n-workflow's sleep utility to avoid restricted globals
• Wrapped inline secondary download errors in NodeApiError so n8n shows node-aware error context
• Added an end-to-end Usage example for the PDF Information & Form Fields operation
• Simplified the API key credential field label