PDF web services

Web services available on the PDF server: one for every occasion

The webPDF server delivers its solutions in the form of individual web services. These web services are implemented in Java and provided through an embedded Tomcat server.

The SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web services are defined via the WSDL (Web Services Description Language) interface, and use XML messages and the HTTP or the secure HTTPS hypertext transfer protocol for data interchange. The services, which are based on JAX-WS Reference Implementation (RI), support SOAP MTOM (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism), when transmitting large volumes of data.

The REST web services are provided via URI endpoints and addressed by means of the HTTP protocol with the methods GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. Data is exchanged as JSON or XML data structures at the interface.

Web service API for PDF operations

The webPDF server’s application programming interface (API) currently provides developers with the following web service endpoints:

  • "Converter" web service
    Converts foreign file formats to PDF, without having to install their original applications
  • "PDF/A" web service
    Creates and validates PDF/A-compliant documents according to the ISO standards for PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3
  • "Toolbox" web service
    Provides PDF editing operations such as split, merge, delete and rotate, along with functions that include watermarks, exporting and printing
  • "Signature" web service
    Generates digital signatures in PDF and attaches certificates to safeguard your PDF documents
  • "OCR" web service
    Uses OCR technology to convert graphics (e. g. faxes) and scanned documents into searchable PDFs
  • "URL Converter" web service
    Converts HTML documents and websites (URLs) to PDF
  • "Barcode" web service
    Creates and detects barcodes in PDF documents

Integrating the web services

These webPDF services can be easily integrated into existing enterprise solutions, such as Lotus Notes / Domino, SAP, Exchange or SharePoint. And it’s also possible to incorporate the web services into J2EE applications, websites or online shop systems.

What’s more, these PDF web services can be used in any programming language that can import and support the use of web services, such as Java, C, C++, .NET, Delphi and PHP.

The webPDF portal is an example of how PDF web services can be integrated and used.