Exporting only a specific set of pages in Node with Bent

In this guide, we'll show you how to export only a specific set of pages from a document using Node and the Bent library to convert them to PDF using PDFShift's API.

When you're converting a document, you might want to export only a specific set of pages from a document. This can be done by setting the pages parameter to the request.

It behaves exactly like the page parameter you can see when you print a document from your browser.

It accepts the following pattern:

• A number, such as 2. This will print the page 2
• A range, such as 2-4. This will print the pages 2 to 4 (2, 3 and 4)
• A list, such as 2,4,5,9. This will print the pages 2, 4, 5 and 9

This way, you can only export the pages that you really need and get immediately the result you want in the PDF, without having to edit it.

Here's an example:

const bent = require('bent')
const fs = require('fs');

// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
api_key = 'sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx'

params = {
    source: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF',
    pages: '2-4'
}

const post = bent('https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf', 'POST', 'json', 200);
const response = await post('', params, {Authorization: 'Basic ' + Buffer.from('api:' + apiKey).toString('base64')});

if (response.status >= 400) {
    throw new Error(`Request failed with status code ${response.status}: ${response.data}`);
}

const getBuffer = bent('buffer')
fs.writeFileSync('result.pdf', await getBuffer(response));

console.log('The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf');