Integrate a document designer in your SaaS with a PDF Creation SDK

Most applications and software products generate a pdf document in some way shape or form. Often such a product has some options for the user to edit the template for this PDF. A good example would be an e-commerce platform like Shopify where the primary users are vendors, business owners that have a store on the platform. From every sale, the need to generate an invoice. The layout of this invoice is different for every vendor because the information varies. Each vendor has a different logo, payment terms and contact information. It would be great to plug in a piece of software that enables the user to fully handle the design themselves, without having to write custom code.

This is essentially what a PDF Creation SDK does. It’s a Software Development Kit that handles the modification of the designs for a document and the creation of each instance of a PDF document. In this article were going to do a dive deep in our solution for integrating a visual designer and look at some of the core features that handle creating a PDF and modifying its design.

A PDF Creation SDK is a toolkit designed to assist developers in crafting and manipulating PDF files efficiently. With an array of functionalities, it enables the generation of tailored PDF documents to meet diverse requirements. Most importantly, it frees developers from making the changes to templates themselves and places the responsibility for those changes in the hands of product owners or end-users. It empowers existing software applications with designer capabilities with a plug-and-play SDK.

Now you might be thinking, I’ll just quickly create a template myself and be done with it. While this is a reaction we often get from developers, we noticed that over the development cycle of a product, PDFs take up more developer time than rightfully justified. For instance, consider a scenario where a developer is tasked with setting up a PDF document. Initially, the process seems straightforward and is completed promptly. However, as the project progresses through various sprints, the document continually requires minor tweaks and adjustments. In one sprint, there’s a need for a slight modification in the layout; in another, the font needs to be changed for better readability. Each of these “minor” modifications, although seemingly insignificant, begins to consume a disproportionate amount of time and resources. The developer finds themselves repeatedly revisiting and adjusting the PDF document, detracting from the time available to focus on other critical aspects of the project.

The result is often quite unsatisfactory too, the designs are often “close-enough” but not entirely accurate. This is because even in modern applications when creating templates often there is no access to all the layout options you have when writing other web components. If you use a framework like Vue, React or AngularJS, it’s often a pain to render those components in a PDF. So, when creating a PDF Template, developers often resolve to just creating their own style set for just that template – resulting in a discrepancy between the application and the rendered document.

In this situation, you might not be sold yet on incorporating a custom SDK for PDF Creation. But things can get complicated fast when you need to enable your end-user to change the design (think back to the Shopify example, where the end user needs to be able to change the invoice design). Are you really going to create a full-fledged document designer from scratch? Most likely not, because it is probably not a core feature of your product, but a nice-to-have. We see a lot of developers trying to find a middle ground here, creating some kind of very limited version of a document designer, that enabled the user to upload a logo and change some basic layout features – often limiting the designing capabilities that the end user has.

This is why we build PDF Design API and made a significant investment in our SDK. We want to enable developers to help their users design the best documents possible. We provide an SDK that is easy to integrate, and can help your users design better documents, fast. Let’s look at some of the options.

Sheet: The basis for the document designer is a Sheet. A Sheet can have any dimensions you need, but defaults to A4 format. You can enter a custom width and height or choose some of the various presets available. Landscape and portrait mode are both supported. The sheet is the basis for your document. On a sheet you can place unlimited number of components and drag them around to the desired position. You can resize each component and change their properties. We’ll zoom in to the current layout components that are currently provided.

Multi page: A design can have multiple pages, as many as you like. There are options to render a component on multiple pages, so you can create a header and a footer that will get rendered in the same way on each page.

Grid and alignment: You toggle a grid to make sure you align components correctly. We also provide buttons to align on X or Y fit the selected components or distribute components evenly among a set space. This helps users to make neat designs.

Conditional Components: A component can be conditionally rendered, based on the data provided for each template. This means that when you send data to a design, and some data is not present, you prevent the component from rendering. An example for that would be that if you have an invoice document, and the invoice is already paid at the time of generation, you can choose to not render a text block that says: “Please pay within the due date of this invoice” but do render a block that says: “This invoice is already paid”.

Layout components:

Fonts & Typography: Select from an extensive range of fonts and typographical features to ensure text within your PDFs is not only readable but aesthetically pleasing. Implementing a variety of fonts, from serif to sans-serif, or even custom typefaces, becomes straightforward, providing flexibility to adhere to brand guidelines. With the PDFDesignAPI SDK you can use all the Google Fonts available. If you need custom fonts, we can help you out 😊.

Color Schemes: The SDK supports a wide palette of colors, enabling users to incorporate brand-specific color schemes into the PDFs, which is vital for maintaining brand consistency across all documents. We provide options to quickly change all colors at once, to speed up the design process. The SDK provides a set of commonly used color schemes, but you are also free to use whatever hex color code you like.

Imagery: Whether it's incorporating logos, product images, or other graphical elements, the SDK allows for easy insertion and manipulation of images within the PDF, enhancing the document's visual appeal. We hooked up the SDK to Unsplash, an open image library where you can pick stock photos to incorporate in your designs. For image manipulation we also provide ways to crop, resize and rotate images.

Graphs & Tables: Visual representation of data through graphs and tables is simplified. Developers can integrate dynamic, data-driven graphs and tables into the PDFs efficiently, making the documents more informative and engaging for the readers. In documents like invoices, order summary and reports, these components are essential.

QR & Barcodes: For documents requiring quick response (QR) codes and barcodes, the SDK facilitates their generation and incorporation seamlessly, essential for tickets, invoices, and other transactional documents.

If you need any custom components integrated, please contact us, we can most likely help you out in a short period of time.

For each PDF document to be rendered and created with data, there needs to be a mechanism to bind data to a template. This needs to be a definable for each component – a QR code might need to be generated from variable data, and a text block might consist of a mixture of predefined text with dynamic data. A table might need a various number of rows (in the example of an invoice, the price, quantity, and item rows are different for each invoice).

To make a coherent and professional design, you need a way to work with this data in the design. That’s where example data comes in to play. PDFDesignAPI works like this: you define a JSON structure with key value pairs, where the keys are mapped to a design at the time of rendering. To work with the data in the context of the designer, the values are used as example data. You can provide a JSON structure and directly edit the JSON data in the designer. We also provide an interface where you can create, edit, and update your structure and example data.

Whenever you want to integrate a document designer into your SaaS application, you likely have a very specific use-case. That usually means you want to design one type of document per instance. An example of this would be if you need an instance of the designer in the part of your software where the customer can change their invoice layout. And maybe another instance of the designer in the settings page where the user can change the layout of their quote or offer document.

In this case you want to predefine the data points the user can use in their designs. In the case of an invoice, the user must be able to use a data point like the shipping address, or the invoice total, products or services bought etc. in the design. With PDFDesignAPI you can create templates for data binding tools. Because you integrate the design in your own software, and control the data being sent to each template; this is an easy task. You just must define the data you want to be made available in the designer and define some example text and you’re done.

In the evolving digital landscape, the necessity for generating customizable documents within software applications cannot be understated. As discussed, a PDF Creation SDK simplifies this task by providing a robust toolkit for developers to create and modify PDF documents. Think of the ubiquitous invoice use case: businesses today, especially on platforms like Shopify, require a dynamic solution to generate invoices that are not just consistent but also personalized to their brand's identity. Crafting these document templates manually, as many would attest, becomes an arduous and time-consuming endeavor, often leading to results that are a mere approximation rather than a precise rendition.

PDFDesignAPI is an advanced solution designed to integrate into SaaS platforms, allowing businesses and end-users to take charge of document designs without getting entangled in the time-consuming task like writing template code. Whether it's tailoring the visual elements like typography, color schemes, and imagery, or adding complex features such as tables, QR codes, and dynamic data rendering, PDF Design API ensures a streamlined, user-friendly approach. Furthermore, the ease with which developers can set predefined data points signifies the tool's adaptability and efficiency.

In summary, a PDF Creation SDK like PDF Design API is more than just a "nice-to-have"; it's an indispensable tool for businesses aiming to elevate their document design capabilities. If you're a developer or business pondering the thought of integrating a document designer into your SaaS application, or if you're stuck in the quandary of manual document edits and "close-enough" designs, take the leap with PDF Design API. We are committed not just to providing a tool, but to partner with you, guiding you through the integration process and setting up tailored templates, ensuring a smooth and efficient transition. Let us help you unlock the full potential of customizable document design for your platform.