---
title: "Adding a custom header or footer"
description: "Discover how to add custom headers or footers to a PDF using PHP and the Guzzle library. This in-depth guide includes PHP codes that you can easily follow and quickly generate documents with PDFShift's API."
language: 'PHP'
library: 'Guzzle'
property: 'header'
output: 'pdf'
related: ['loading-css-from-a-string', 'loading-css-from-a-url', 'loading-javascript-from-a-string', 'loading-javascript-from-a-url']
default: false
---

In this guide, we'll show you how to add custom headers or footers to a PDF using PHP and the Guzzle library.

We'll focus this guide on the `header` parameter, but know that the `footer` parameter works _exactly_ the same way.

The `header` parameter is an object that accepts the following parameters:

 * `source`: The source of the header. It can be a URL or a raw HTML document. You can also provide some variables that we'll explain at the bottom of this guide.
 * `height`: The height of the header. By default, the height is in pixels, but you can also use `mm`, `cm` or `in` as units, like `10mm`.
 * `start_at`: The page number where the header should start. By default, the header will start at the first page.


**NOTE**: You must provide the full data in the header/footer, and not via a network request. Loading files such as external CSS, Js or Fonts won't work in the header or footer.
Instead, we recommend you to embed them in Base64.

Here's an example:

```php
use GuzzleHttp\Client;
use GuzzleHttp\Exception\RequestException;

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

$params = array (
    'source' => 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF',
    'header' => array (
        'source' => '<div>Page {{ page }} over a total of {{ total }}. Made on {{ date }}</div>',
        'height' => 150,
        'start_at' => 2
    )
)

// Create a Guzzle client
$client = new Client();
try {
    // Make the POST request
    $response = $client->post('https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf', [
        'headers' => [
            'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
            'X-API-Key' => $api_key
        ],
        'json' => $params
    ]);

    // Get the response body
    $body = $response->getBody()->getContents();

    // Save the file to result.pdf
    file_put_contents('result.pdf', $body);

    echo 'The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf';
} catch (RequestException $e) {
    if ($e->hasResponse()) {
        $statusCode = $e->getResponse()->getStatusCode();
        $reasonPhrase = $e->getResponse()->getReasonPhrase();
        throw new Exception("Request failed with status code $statusCode: $reasonPhrase");
    } else {
        throw new Exception("Request failed: " . $e->getMessage());
    }
}
```

The `source` parameter present in the header/footer accepts a set of variables that will be translated when converting the document.

Here are the properties you can use:

 * `{{ title }}`: The title of the document.
 * `{{ url }}`: The URL of the document.
 * `{{ page }}`: The current page number.
 * `{{ total }}`: The total number of pages in the document.
 * `{{ date }}`: The current date in the format `M/D/YY-H:MM am/pm` such as "3/16/24, 2:04 PM".


This will allow you to generate a document that looks more like a printable version of a website, with page number and customized header and footer.