pdfglyph-client

Official Node.js client for the PDFGlyph API — render HTML and CSS to pixel-perfect PDFs, or full-page screenshots, with one API call.

Ships both ESM and CommonJS builds with TypeScript types. No runtime dependencies. Requires Node 20 or newer (it uses the global fetch).

Installation

npm install pdfglyph-client

Getting an API key

This client talks to a hosted service and needs an account. The free tier is 100 renders a month with no card: sign up at pdfglyph.com and create a key in the dashboard. Keys are prefixed pk_test_ or pk_live_.

Quick start

import { PDFGlyph } from "pdfglyph-client";
import fs from "node:fs";

const client = new PDFGlyph(process.env.PDFGLYPH_API_KEY);

// Synchronous render — PDF bytes come straight back
const { pdf, pageCount } = await client.renderSync({
  html: "<h1>Hello World</h1>",
});
fs.writeFileSync("output.pdf", pdf);
console.log(`Generated ${pageCount} page PDF`);

// Async render — submit a job, poll, download
const job = await client.render({ html: "<h1>Hello World</h1>" });
await client.waitForCompletion(job.jobId);
const bytes = await client.downloadPdf(job.jobId);

CommonJS works too:

const { PDFGlyph } = require("pdfglyph-client");

Screenshots

Set format to png or jpeg and the same endpoint returns images instead of a PDF. Pages are 1-based and match the order of screenshotUrls.

const job = await client.render({ html: "<h1>Hi</h1>" }, { format: "png" });
await client.waitForCompletion(job.jobId);

const { image, contentType } = await client.downloadScreenshot(job.jobId, 1);
fs.writeFileSync("page-1.png", image);

Webhooks

Pass webhookUrl when submitting a job and PDFGlyph will POST to it on completion, signed with HMAC-SHA256 in the X-PDFGlyph-Signature header. Verify against the raw request body — parsing and re-serializing the JSON first will change the bytes and break the signature.

const isValid = PDFGlyph.verifyWebhookSignature(
  rawBody,
  req.headers["x-pdfglyph-signature"],
  process.env.PDFGLYPH_WEBHOOK_SECRET,
);

Errors

Any non-2xx response throws a PDFGlyphError carrying the server's message and the HTTP status:

import { PDFGlyphError } from "pdfglyph-client";

try {
  await client.renderSync({ html });
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof PDFGlyphError && err.statusCode === 402) {
    // monthly quota exhausted
  }
  throw err;
}

API reference

new PDFGlyph(apiKey, options?)

• apiKey — your API key (pk_live_* or pk_test_*)
• options.baseUrl — override the API base URL (default https://pdfglyph.com)

Methods

| Method | Description | | --- | --- | | render(input, options?) | Submit an async render job | | renderSync(input, options?) | Render now; resolves to { pdf, pageCount, fileSize, renderTimeMs, totalTimeMs } | | getJob(jobId) | Fetch job status | | cancelJob(jobId) | Cancel a queued or processing job | | downloadPdf(jobId) | Download the finished PDF as a Buffer | | downloadScreenshot(jobId, page?) | Download one screenshot page (1-based); resolves to { image, contentType } | | waitForCompletion(jobId, options?) | Poll until terminal; options.timeout (ms, default 60000) and options.interval (ms, default 1000) |

input accepts html, css, and url. options accepts format, landscape, margins, headerTemplate, footerTemplate, pageRanges, printBackground, and webhookUrl.

Static methods

• PDFGlyph.verifyWebhookSignature(payload, signature, secret) — constant-time HMAC check, returns a boolean

License

MIT