Errors

What happens when something goes wrong while you work with the API? Pdfly API uses standard HTTP status codes to indicate the success or failure of requests. When errors occur, detailed error messages are included in the body to help diagnose and resolve issues.

You can tell if your request was successful by checking the status code when receiving an API response. If a response comes back unsuccessful, you can use the error message to figure out what has gone wrong and do some rudimentary debugging (before contacting support).

Status codes

Here is a list of the different categories of status codes returned by the Pdfly API. Use these to understand if a request was successful.

Name
2xx
Description
A 2xx status code indicates a successful response.
Name
4xx
Description
A 4xx status code indicates a client error — this means there's something wrong with your request.
Name
5xx
Description
A 5xx status code indicates a server error — you won't be seeing these.

Error messages

Whenever a request is unsuccessful, the Pdfly API will return an error response with a status code and message. You can use this information to understand better what has gone wrong and how to fix it. Most of the error messages are pretty helpful and actionable.

Error response

{
  "statusCode": 500,
  "message": "Internal server error"
}