Use case
Generate certificates as PDFs
Somebody finished a course, passed an assessment or won something, and now needs a certificate with their name on it — printable, consistent, and issued automatically rather than by someone editing a Word file.
What you send
This is the template's own sample data — the document on the left was drawn from exactly this.
{
"data": {
"issuer": "Northgate Studio",
"award": "Certificate of Completion",
"recipient": "Priya Raman",
"reason": "for completing the Advanced Document Automation programme",
"issued_on": "1 August 2026",
"signatory": {
"name": "Daniel Adetoyinbo",
"title": "Managing Director"
}
}
}POST it to your document's endpoint with your API key. The reply is JSON carrying a signed pdf_url — a link rather than the bytes, because a base64 document breaks receivers sitting behind a default body limit.
curl -X POST https://www.doc2api.co/api/v1/documents/<ID>/render \
-H "X-Api-Key: d2a_live_…" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d @payload.json
# → { "pdf_url": "https://…", "pdf_bytes": 17185, "sha256": "…",
# "pdf_url_expires_at": "…" }What the template already does
- Landscape A4, centred, with the recipient's name as the focal point
- Title, awarding body, reason and date of issue
- A rule and spacing that survive a name twice as long as the sample's
And what you can add in the designer
Not in the starting template — a few clicks once it is open.
- A signature block, and a drawn signature stamped into the PDF
- A verification QR code pointing at your own URL
- Your logo, seal or brand colour
- A reference number, and a barcode carrying it
Verifiable, if you want it to be
Add a QR code holding a link to your own verification page and the printed certificate stops being the only record of itself. The code is generated into the document, so there is nothing to host and nothing to keep in sync.
Already have a PDF you have to use?
Designing from a template is one of the three things Doc2api does. If you were handed a form you cannot redraw — a claim form, a government return, a contract in someone else's house style — upload it instead and we read its fields into a JSON schema. Or paste your own HTML into the designer and we render that.
Open it and see for yourself
The template opens in the editor, filled with the sample data above, with a live endpoint and an API key. No account, nothing to cancel — and the first 100 test fills each month are free.