Press

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Your First Template ​

The Quickstart section uses a pre-built default template from Papermill. To control how your PDF looks - branding, layout, typography, headers, footers - you'll create your own. Papermill templates are written in Press, Papermill's powerful document language.

A Simple Template ​

Here's a simple one-page template that incorporates body text sent to the API:

xml
<press>
  <document>
    <page format="a4" page-margin="2cm">
      <h1>A Simple Document</h1>
      <flow name="body" />
    </page>
  </document>
  <flows>
    <body></body>
  </flows>
</press>

The <press> tag is the root tag in all Papermill templates. The <document> tag contains a sequence of pages that make up the document. The <flow> tag is a placeholder that says "content will be inserted here on this page". The content inserted in this case comes from the <flows>-><body> tag.

When markdown is sent to the API and tagged as the body flow, it will replace the empty <body> in the template and Papermill will "flow" the content into your page.

You can learn more about flows and other features of the Press language in Core Concepts.

Create the Template ​

To add the template to your account, log in to Papermill editor and click "New" from the file menu. Give your template a name and paste in the example above. The preview will show an A4 page with the title at the top.

Copy the Template ID ​

You can grab the template ID from top-right of the editor.

Finding your Template ID

Store the template ID in an environmental variable:

export TEMPLATE_ID=...

Generate Documents using your Template ​

You can now use cURL or your programming language to create your PDF using your template ID and API Key. If you haven't already setup your API key, you can find instructions in the quickstart.

Replace $TEMPLATE_ID with your ID copied from the Papermill editor.

shell
curl -X POST "https://api.papermill.io/v2/pdf?template_id=$TEMPLATE_ID" \
  -H "x-api-key: $PAPERMILL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/xml" \
  -o first-document.pdf \
  --data-binary @- <<EOF
<press>
  <flows>
    <body type="markdown">
# Q3 Revenue Summary

Quarterly performance across our core product lines.

| Product       | Revenue      | Growth |
|---------------|--------------|--------|
| Platform      | £482,000     | +18%   |
| Add-ons       | £124,000     | +42%   |
| Services      | £67,000      | -3%    |
| **Total**     | **£673,000** | **+19%** |

Strong quarter overall, driven by add-on adoption.
    </body>
  </flows>
</press>
EOF

Customising your Template ​

You can now make changes in the editor and they'll be reflected in the PDF returned from the API. Let's add a simple header into the top margin:

xml
<press>
  <document>
    <page format="a4" page-margin="2cm">
      <frame text-align="right" font-color="grey" margin-bottom="1cm">
        Acme Corporation
      </frame>
      <flow name="body" />
    </page>
  </document>
  <flows>
    <body></body>
  </flows>
</press>

What's Next ​

Core concepts Understand the conceptual foundations of the Press language.