Generate PDFs in Django

Install

pip install requests

Generate a PDF in Django

POST your HTML and data to /api/v1/generate with your API key, then save the PDF that comes back. Swap in your own HTML or a saved template_id and loop over records to render at scale.

import requests
from django.conf import settings
from django.http import HttpResponse

def invoice_pdf(request):
    res = requests.post(
        "https://pdfgen.com/api/v1/generate",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {settings.PDFGEN_API_KEY}"},
        json={
            "html": "<h1>Invoice {{number}}</h1><p>Billed to {{client}} — total {{total}}</p>",
            "engine": "handlebars",
            "format": "A4",
            "data": {"number": "INV-001", "client": "Acme Corp", "total": "$2,400.00"},
        },
    )

    response = HttpResponse(res.content, content_type="application/pdf")
    response["Content-Disposition"] = "attachment; filename=invoice.pdf"
    return response

Convert existing HTML to PDF in Django

Already have finished HTML? Skip templating — render a Django template to HTML, then convert it and send it with engine: "legacy", which tells the API your markup is final.

import requests
from django.conf import settings
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.loader import render_to_string

def invoice_pdf(request):
    # Render an existing Django template to an HTML string.
    html = render_to_string("invoice.html", {"number": "INV-001"})

    res = requests.post(
        "https://pdfgen.com/api/v1/generate",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {settings.PDFGEN_API_KEY}"},
        json={"html": html, "engine": "legacy", "format": "A4"},
    )

    response = HttpResponse(res.content, content_type="application/pdf")
    response["Content-Disposition"] = "attachment; filename=invoice.pdf"
    return response

How it works

1. 1

   Send your HTML + data

   POST an HTML template (with optional Handlebars tokens) and a data object to the API.

2. 2

   We render the PDF

   PDFgen renders it server-side — no headless browser for you to run or scale.

3. 3

   Get the PDF back

   Receive the PDF binary (or a hosted link with export_type:"url") and serve it from Django.

Good to know

• Keep PDFGEN_API_KEY in settings, loaded from an environment variable.
• You can render an existing Django template with render_to_string() and pass that as the html field.
• Use content_type="application/pdf" so browsers handle the response as a file.

Frequently asked questions

How do I return a PDF from a Django view?

Call /api/v1/generate with requests, then return HttpResponse(res.content, content_type="application/pdf") with a Content-Disposition header.

Can I use my existing Django templates?

Yes — render the template to a string with render_to_string() and pass it as the html field (use engine "html" if you don’t need Handlebars).

Do I need wkhtmltopdf or a system package?

No. Rendering happens on PDFgen, so there’s nothing native to install on your Django servers.

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