Adding a custom header or footer in Java with HttpClient

In this guide, we'll show you how to add custom headers and footers to your PDFs using Java and the HttpClient library.

When generating PDFs, you might want to add custom headers and footers to your documents for branding or informational purposes.

import java.net.http.*;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest.BodyPublishers;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse.BodyHandlers;
import java.time.Duration;

// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
String apiKey = "sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx";

HttpClient client = HttpClient.newBuilder()
    .connectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(10))
    .build();

HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
    .uri(URI.create("https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf"))
    .header("X-API-Key", apiKey)
    .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
    .POST(BodyPublishers.ofString("{\n" +
        "  \"source\": \"https://www.example.com\",\n" +
        "  \"header\": {\n" +
        "    \"content\": \"<div style='text-align: center;'>Header Content</div>\",\n" +
        "    \"height\": \"20mm\"\n" +
        "  },\n" +
        "  \"footer\": {\n" +
        "    \"content\": \"<div style='text-align: center;'>Footer Content</div>\",\n" +
        "    \"height\": \"20mm\"\n" +
        "  }\n" +
        "}"))
    .build();

HttpResponse<byte[]> response = client.send(request, BodyHandlers.ofByteArray());

// Handle errors:
if (response.statusCode() >= 400) {
    throw new RuntimeException("Request failed with status code " + response.statusCode());
}

java.nio.file.Files.write(java.nio.file.Paths.get("result.pdf"), response.body());

System.out.println("The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf");

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.