CLI

The PDFMonkey CLI can be used the edit templates in your local environment, using your own tools.

This CLI tool is a great solution for developers who want to author PDFMonkey templates using their own code editor and local development environment.

Installation

The PDFMonkey CLI can be installed using npm.

npm install -g @pdfmonkey/cli

Once installed, the pdfmonkey command will be available in your terminal.

Help

To get a list of available commands and general help, run the following command:

pdfmonkey help

Authentication

There are two ways to authenticate with the PDFMonkey CLI:

1. All commands accept the -k or --api-key option to specify an API key.

2. You can also set the PDFMONKEY_API_KEY environment variable.

API Key in this page

The commands below will assume the API key is set in the environment variable.

Init

To start editing a PDFMonkey template, run the following command:

pdfmonkey init <template-id>

You will then be prompted to choose the destination directory for the template files. You can also specify the destnation folder as a second argument.

pdfmonkey init <template-id> <destination-folder>

[!TIP] Open in Editor

You can also open the created folder in your default editor using the -e or --edit option.

pdfmonkey init <template-id> -e

Watch

To start watching a template folder and sync the changes to PDFMonkey, run the following command:

pdfmonkey watch -t <template-id>

This will start watching files in the current folder and sync automatically.

To monitor a different folder, simply pass the path as first argument:

pdfmonkey watch <path> -t <template-id>

[!TIP] Template ID and folder name

If the watched template is named after the ID of the template, you can omit the -t option.

pwd
/Users/pdfmonkey/templates/B1001CF2-53FC-4DC6-B51D-36B358743752

pdfmonkey watch
# Watches the current folder and syncs the matching template

Preview

The watch command will start a local server to preview the template. The preview will automatically refresh when changes are synced.

You can open the preview when the server is running using the -o or --open-browser option.

pdfmonkey watch -o

By default, the preview server runs on port 2081 and the live-reload server runs on port 2082. You can specify different ports using the -p/--port and -l/--livereload-port options.

pdfmonkey watch -p 2083 -l 2084

Alternatively, you can set the PORT and LIVE_RELOAD_PORT environment variables to customize the ports.

PORT=2083 LIVE_RELOAD_PORT=2084 pdfmonkey watch

Debug Preview

Sometimes, it can be easier to debug the generated HTML instead of the PDF. You can do this by using the -D or --debug option.

pdfmonkey watch -D -o

This will open the debug preview in your default browser.

Dealing with conflicts

When starting the watch command, the CLI will check if there are any conflicts between the local files and the template data. If there are, you will be prompted to choose between:

1. Overwrite the local files with the template data.

2. Keep the local files and override the template data on the next sync.

3. To see a diff of the changes.

By default, the diff tool used is diff -u and the patch is displayed with the less pager. You can specify different diff-tool and pager using the DIFF and PAGER environment variables, respectively.

DIFF=delta PAGER=delta pdfmonkey watch

Configuration

Here is a summary of the environment variables that can be set to customize the behavior of the CLI:

• PDFMONKEY_API_KEY: The API key to use for authentication.

• DIFF: The diff tool to use.

• PAGER: The pager to use when displaying diffs.

• PORT: The port to run the preview server on.

• LIVE_RELOAD_PORT: The port to run the live-reload server on.