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.tx in 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 from REPORTINGCLOUD_USERNAME and REPORTINGCLOUD_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.tx with 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.