Getting Started
Once you have a ReportingCloud account and an API key, the next step is a first document. Each tutorial of Getting Started ends with a result you can open, a merged invoice or report as a PDF file or a web page that lists the templates in your storage, and assumes that you know your language and framework but have not sent a request to ReportingCloud before.
Underneath, every tutorial sends HTTPS requests with JSON to the Web API at https://api.reporting.cloud/, where ReportingCloud merges templates with your data and returns the documents. Nothing is installed on a server. You choose how to send the request: with curl, or with one of the four SDKs that SDKs describes, for .NET, PHP, Java and Ruby.
Before You Begin
- A ReportingCloud account. A 30-day trial account is enough for every tutorial. Creating an Account shows how to sign up in the ReportingCloud portal. A new trial account has the demo template
sample_invoice.txin its template storage, which every tutorial except ASP.NET Core merges, and it adds the ReportingCloud logo to every document it creates. - An API key, or your user name and password. The Web API, .NET and PHP tutorials authenticate with an API key that you create on the Manage Account page of the portal, as API Keys describes, and read it from the environment variable
REPORTINGCLOUD_API_KEY, so that it stays out of your code. The Java and Ruby SDKs have no option for an API key: their tutorials read the user name and password of the account fromREPORTINGCLOUD_USERNAMEandREPORTINGCLOUD_PASSWORD. - The tools of your tutorial. The ASP.NET Core tutorial was written with Visual Studio 2026 and .NET 10, the .NET Framework tutorial with Visual Studio 2022 and the .NET Framework 4.8. The PHP tutorial needs PHP 8.3 or later and Composer, the Java tutorial a JDK, Git and curl, the Ruby tutorial Ruby with RubyGems, and the Web API tutorial a bash shell with curl and jq. Requirements lists what each SDK needs.
Every successful merge request counts 1 against the monthly document quota of your plan.
Find the Right Page
| If you want to | Read | Uses |
|---|---|---|
| See the request and response of a merge, whatever language you use later | Web API | curl and jq in a bash shell |
| Create a PDF from C# objects in an ASP.NET Core application | ASP.NET Core in .NET | TXTextControl.ReportingCloud from nuget.org, .NET 10 |
| Use ReportingCloud from an existing ASP.NET MVC 5 application | .NET Framework in .NET | TXTextControl.ReportingCloud from nuget.org, .NET Framework 4.8 |
| Create a PDF from a PHP script | PHP | textcontrol/textcontrol-reportingcloud from Packagist |
| Create a PDF from a Java program | Java | The Java SDK, built from its GitHub source with javac |
| Create a PDF from a Ruby script | Ruby | The gem txtextcontrol-reportingcloud from RubyGems |
SDKs describes the four SDKs in full and compares them.
Where to Start
If ReportingCloud is new to you:
- Create a trial account and an API key, as Creating an Account and API Keys describe.
- Merge the demo invoice with Web API. One curl command shows what every SDK sends, and the response shows what it receives.
- Continue with the tutorial for your language: .NET, PHP, Java or Ruby.
- Read Mail Merge to design templates and data of your own.
Pages in This Section
- Web API: merge the demo template
sample_invoice.txwith invoice data using curl and save the PDF. - .NET: merge templates with C# objects in an ASP.NET Core application on .NET 10 or an ASP.NET MVC 5 application on the .NET Framework.
- PHP: merge the demo invoice with the PHP SDK, and send a template from your disk with the request.
- Java: build the Java SDK, merge the demo invoice and send the template with the request.
- Ruby: install the gem, merge the demo invoice and send the template with the request.