DoCreate
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Quick Start

Generate your first PDF in under 5 minutes

This guide walks you through generating your first PDF with DoCreate in under 5 minutes.

Step 1: Create an Account

Sign up for a DoCreate account at docreate.io. You can get started with the free tier, which includes a generous number of PDF generations per month.

Step 2: Create a Project

After signing in, navigate to your team dashboard and create a new project. Give it a descriptive name such as "My First Project" or the name of the application you are building.

Step 3: Generate an API Key

Inside your project, go to the API Keys section and click Create API Key. Copy the generated key immediately -- it will only be displayed once. Store it securely, for example in an environment variable:

export DOCREATE_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

Step 4: Generate Your First PDF

Run the following cURL command in your terminal to generate a simple PDF:

curl -X POST https://api.docreate.io/api/pdf/external \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOCREATE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "html": "<h1>Hello, DoCreate!</h1><p>This is my first generated PDF.</p>",
    "css": "h1 { color: #1a1a2e; } p { color: #555; font-size: 14px; }"
  }' \
  --output my-first-pdf.pdf

If everything is set up correctly, you will find a file called my-first-pdf.pdf in your current directory. Open it to see your generated document.

What Just Happened?

  1. You sent a POST request to the DoCreate API endpoint.
  2. The Authorization header carried your API key as a Bearer token.
  3. The request body contained the HTML content and CSS styling for the document.
  4. DoCreate rendered the HTML/CSS into a PDF and returned it as a binary response.
  5. The --output flag saved the binary response to a file.

Next Steps

  • Authentication -- Learn more about API key management and security.
  • Your First PDF -- Explore the full request body structure, including headers, footers, and dynamic data.