Exporting only a specific set of pages in Ruby with Faraday

In this guide, we'll show you how to export only a specific set of pages from a document using Ruby and the Faraday 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:

require 'faraday'
require 'json'

# 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'
}

# Create a Faraday connection
conn = Faraday.new(url: "https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf") do |faraday|
    faraday.request :url_encoded
    faraday.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
end

# Make the POST request
response = conn.post do |req|
    req.headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/json'
    req.headers['Authorization'] = "Basic #{Base64.strict_encode64("api:#{api_key}")}"
    req.body = params.to_json
end

# Check for successful response
unless response.success?
    raise "Request failed with status code #{response.status}: #{response.body}"
end

# write response to a file nammed "result.pdf"
File.open('result.pdf', 'wb') { |f| f.write(response.body) }

# Print a success message
puts 'The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf'

For further details on the pages property and its usage, please refer to our dedicated documentation.

We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions or noticed any issues on the code above,
feel free to drop us a line.