Delete Temporary File

Deletes temporary file (that was uploaded by you or generated by API).

Try it live: Delete Temporary File → API Tester — send a real request from your browser.

POST /v1/file/delete

All temporary files are auto removed after 1 hour. You may use File Upload methods to explicitly force remove temp files once you don’t need them.

Attributes

Attributes are case-sensitive and should be inside JSON for POST request. for example: { "url": "https://example.com/file1.pdf" }

Attribute	Type	Required	Default	Description
url	string	Yes	-	URL of the previously uploaded temporary file or output file that was generated by the API method.

Query parameters

No query parameters accepted.

Responses

Parameter	Type	Description
error	boolean	Indicates whether an error occurred (false means success)
status	string	Status code of the request (200, 404, 500, etc.). For more information, see Response Codes.
message	string	Message of the request
credits	integer	Number of credits consumed by the request
duration	integer	Time taken for the operation in milliseconds
errorCode	integer	Error code of the request (400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 500, etc.)
remainingCredits	integer	Number of credits remaining in the account

Example Payload

To see the request size limits, please refer to the Request Size Limits.

{
  "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/b5c1e67d98ab438292ff1fea0c7cdc9d/sample.pdf"
}

Example Response

To see the main response codes, please refer to the Response Codes page.

{
  "error": false,
  "status": 200,
  "remainingCredits": 9999986
}

Inconsistent URL Encoding in cURL Output: When using cURL to make API requests, the output JSON may show URL characters encoded as Unicode escape sequences. For example, the ampersand character (&) may appear as \u0026 in the cURL output. This is normal JSON encoding behavior and does not affect the validity of the URL. The URL will function correctly when used, as JSON parsers automatically decode these escape sequences. If you’re parsing the response programmatically, your JSON parser will handle this conversion automatically.

Code Samples

CURL

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.pdf.co/v1/file/delete'
--header 'x-api-key: *******************'
--data-raw '{
    "url": "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/b5c1e67d98ab438292ff1fea0c7cdc9d/sample.pdf"
}'

JavaScript/Node.js

var https = require("https");
var path = require("path");

const API_KEY = "*************************************";


function deleteFile(apiKey, fileName) {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
      // Prepare request to `file/delete` API endpoint
      let queryPath = `/v1/file/delete?url=${fileName}`;
      let reqOptions = {
          host: "api.pdf.co",
          path: encodeURI(queryPath),
          headers: { "x-api-key": apiKey }
      };
      // Send request
      https.get(reqOptions, (response) => {
          response.on("data", (d) => {
              let data = JSON.parse(d);
              if (data.status == 200) {
                  console.log("remainingCredits: " + data.remainingCredits);
                  resolve([data.remainingCredits]);
              }
              else {
                  // Service reported error
                  console.log("Error");
              }
          });
       })
       .on("error", (e) => {
            // Request error
            console.log("error: " + e);
       });
  });
}

let result = deleteFile(API_KEY, "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/b5c1e67d98ab438292ff1fea0c7cdc9d/sample.pdf");

Python

# The authentication key (API Key).
# Get your own by registering at https://app.pdf.co
API_KEY = "*************************************"

# Base URL for PDF.co Web API requests
BASE_URL = "https://api.pdf.co/v1"

fileName = "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/b5c1e67d98ab438292ff1fea0c7cdc9d/sample.pdf"

url = "{}/file/delete?url={}".format(BASE_URL, fileName)

# Execute request and get response as JSON
response = requests.get(url, headers={"x-api-key": API_KEY})
if (response.status_code == 200):
    json = response.json()

    if json["status"] == 200:
        remainingCredits = json["remainingCredits"]

PHP

<?php
  $apiKey = "***************";
  $fileName = "https://pdf-temp-files.s3.amazonaws.com/b5c1e67d98ab438292ff1fea0c7cdc9d/sample.pdf";
  $url = "https://api.pdf.co/v1/file/delete?url=" . $fileName;

  // Create request
  $curl = curl_init();
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("x-api-key: " . $apiKey));
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
  curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  // Execute request
  $result = curl_exec($curl);
?>