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Gotchas when downloading PDFs from Zoho Creator using Node JS


I spent a confusing 90 minutes trying to figure out how to download PDFs from Zoho Creator from a Node JS API. (Backstory is that I wanted to be able to email a Zoho Creator HTML page as a PDF attachment to customers).

There are two gotchas I discovered:

1. There is a 302 redirect from the URL that Zoho gives you in their documentation (e.g. https://creator.zohopublic.com/customer/app/pdf/HTML_Page/PUBLIC_SHARE_KEY) to a URL like this: https://creator.zohopublic.com/exportData.do?sharedBy=customer&appLinkName=app&viewLinkName=HTML_Page_Link_Name&privatelink=PUBLIC_SHARE_KEY&fileType=pdf

You either have to use followRedirects or use the second URL.

2. Zoho Creator won't actually give you a real PDF unless you supply a realistic user agent. I spent a good hour trying to figure out why I kept getting 0 bytes back when downloading the PDF from my code. The solution was to pretend to be a browser to get the PDF.


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