What units are the page sizes in?

PDF points, where 72 points is an inch. An A4 page reads 595 by 842 and US Letter reads 612 by 792.

Does it work on an encrypted PDF?

No. An encrypted file has to be opened first: call unlock-pdf with its password, then read the result.

Is the whole file uploaded?

Yes, base64 in the request body. It is processed in memory and not written to disk, and only the call itself is recorded.

PDF metadata API

Page count, page sizes, rotation and document metadata.

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Endpoint	POST https://astralpdf.com/api/v1/pdf-info
Auth	Bearer token, free
Sends	input: base64
Returns	result: json
Price	Free. 1,000 calls a day, 60 a minute.

When to call it

Most PDF work starts with a question about the file: how many pages, what size, is it landscape, who produced it. Answering that in a validation step is what stops a 400-page upload, a mixed-orientation batch or an empty file reaching the process that assumed none of those.

Example

curl

curl -X POST https://astralpdf.com/api/v1/pdf-info \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ast_YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input": "JVBERi0xLjcKJYGBgYEK..."}'

response

{
  "tool": "pdf-info",
  "result": "{\n  \"pages\": 12,\n  \"title\": \"Quarterly report\",\n  \"author\": null,\n  \"producer\": \"pdf-lib\",\n  \"bytes\": 48213,\n  \"pageSizes\": [{ \"page\": 1, \"width\": 595, \"height\": 842, \"rotation\": 0 }]\n}",
  "chars": 214,
  "ms": 11
}

In your language

JavaScript

const res = await fetch("https://astralpdf.com/api/v1/pdf-info", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.ASTRAL_TOKEN}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({"input": "JVBERi0xLjcKJYGBgYEK..."}),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).detail);
const { result } = await res.json();

Python

import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://astralpdf.com/api/v1/pdf-info",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['ASTRAL_TOKEN']}"},
    json={"input": "JVBERi0xLjcKJYGBgYEK..."},
    timeout=30,
)
res.raise_for_status()
result = res.json()["result"]

Parameters

Field	Type	Notes
input	string	Required. The file, base64 encoded. A data: URL is accepted too. Up to 6,000,000 characters per call.

Errors

Errors are RFC 7807 problem documents with a stable type you can branch on.

missing-token	401	No Authorization header.
bad-request	400	input missing or the wrong type.
tool-failed	422	The input could not be processed. detail says why.
quota-exceeded	429	Past 1,000 calls today.

Questions

What units are the page sizes in?: PDF points, where 72 points is an inch. An A4 page reads 595 by 842 and US Letter reads 612 by 792.
Does it work on an encrypted PDF?: No. An encrypted file has to be opened first: call unlock-pdf with its password, then read the result.
Is the whole file uploaded?: Yes, base64 in the request body. It is processed in memory and not written to disk, and only the call itself is recorded.

Other endpoints

A token takes thirty seconds

Free, no card, 1,000 calls a day, and the same token works on astraltext.com, astralpdf.com, astraljson.com and astralbatch.com.

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