Using cookies in Java with Netty
In this guide, we'll show you how to use cookies when converting HTML to PDF using Java and the Netty library.
When converting HTML to PDF, you might need to send cookies to access authenticated content or maintain session state.
import io.netty.bootstrap.Bootstrap;
import io.netty.channel.*;
import io.netty.channel.nio.NioEventLoopGroup;
import io.netty.channel.socket.SocketChannel;
import io.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioSocketChannel;
import io.netty.handler.codec.http.*;
import io.netty.util.CharsetUtil;
// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
String apiKey = "sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx";
EventLoopGroup group = new NioEventLoopGroup();
try {
Bootstrap b = new Bootstrap();
b.group(group)
.channel(NioSocketChannel.class)
.handler(new ChannelInitializer<SocketChannel>() {
@Override
public void initChannel(SocketChannel ch) {
ChannelPipeline p = ch.pipeline();
p.addLast(new HttpClientCodec());
p.addLast(new HttpObjectAggregator(1024 * 1024));
}
});
Channel ch = b.connect("api.pdfshift.io", 443).sync().channel();
FullHttpRequest request = new DefaultFullHttpRequest(
HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1, HttpMethod.POST, "/v3/convert/pdf");
request.headers().set(HttpHeaderNames.HOST, "api.pdfshift.io");
request.headers().set("X-API-Key", apiKey);
request.headers().set(HttpHeaderNames.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json");
String payload = "{\n" +
" \"source\": \"https://www.example.com\",\n" +
" \"cookies\": {\n" +
" \"sessionid\": \"abc123\",\n" +
" \"user\": \"john_doe\"\n" +
" }\n" +
"}";
request.content().writeBytes(payload.getBytes(CharsetUtil.UTF_8));
request.headers().setInt(HttpHeaderNames.CONTENT_LENGTH, request.content().readableBytes());
ChannelFuture f = ch.writeAndFlush(request);
f.addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE);
// Handle response and save PDF...
System.out.println("The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf");
} finally {
group.shutdownGracefully();
}
This allows you to maintain session state when accessing protected content.
For further details on the cookies 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.