Adding a custom header or footer in C# with HTTPWebRequest
In this guide, we'll show you how to add custom headers and footers to your PDFs using C# and the HTTPWebRequest library.
When generating PDFs, you might want to add custom headers and footers to your documents for branding or informational purposes.
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
var apiKey = "sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx";
var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/json";
request.Headers.Add("X-API-Key", apiKey);
var payload = new
{
source = "https://www.example.com",
// Add custom header and footer
header = new
{
content = "<div style='text-align: center;'>Header Content</div>",
height = "20mm"
},
footer = new
{
content = "<div style='text-align: center;'>Footer Content</div>",
height = "20mm"
}
};
var json = System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer.Serialize(payload);
byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
request.ContentLength = data.Length;
using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
}
try
{
var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
// Handle errors:
if (response.StatusCode >= HttpStatusCode.BadRequest)
{
throw new Exception($"Request failed with status code {response.StatusCode}");
}
using (var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
var result = reader.ReadToEnd();
File.WriteAllText("result.pdf", result);
}
Console.WriteLine("The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf");
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine($"Error: {ex.Message}");
}
This allows you to add consistent branding elements to all your generated PDF documents.
For further details on the header property and its usage, please refer to our dedicated documentation.
We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions or noticed any issues on the code above,
feel free to drop us a line.