How to Generate PDFs from Your Adalo App

What people usually try first, and why it fails

What you want is one thing: send record data out, get a real PDF file and a link back.

• Screenshots — poor quality, captures the rest of the screen.
• Zapier or Make — a paid subscription plus several seconds of delay.
• HTML in a WebView — renders on screen, no file to save or email.

What you will build

A "Download Invoice" button that posts the record, gets a PDF link back, saves it, and opens it.

• An Adalo app with a collection holding the document data (Orders, for example)
• A free Webnux Tools account
• Ten minutes

Step 1: Design the PDF once

Go to the PDF Generator and design your document. This is the part you do visually, and you only do it once.

Pick whether your document has a list of items in it:

• No list. One person, one total. Certificates, letters, confirmations.
• Yes, it has a list. Invoices, receipts and quotes with several product rows.

Save your template and copy its ID

Set your heading, your colours, your logo, and the fields you want printed. When it looks right, click Save template.

Your template appears under "Your saved templates". Click Copy ID on it. That ID is now on your clipboard and you will need it in Step 3. It looks like this:

3f1c8a10-5f3b-4a1e-9c77-5d1f0b2a91d4

Step 2: Create the Custom Action in Adalo

In the Adalo editor, select the button that will generate the PDF, then:

1. 1.Click Actions → + New Custom Action → API Request
2. 2.Action Name: Generate PDF
3. 3.Method: POST
4. 4.API Base URL: https://api.webnux.org/pdf/generate

Step 3: Add the headers

Under Headers & Queries, click + Add Item and choose Header. There are only two headers, and only one of them is required:

Step 4: Tell it what to put on the document

Find the Body field of the Custom Action and paste this in:

{
  "template_id": "PASTE_YOUR_TEMPLATE_ID",
  "customer_name": "",
  "date": "",
  "total": ""
}

Map each value to Magic Text

Click into each empty value and pick the Magic Text from your record: customer_name → Current Order > Customer Name, date → Current Order > Created Date, total → Current Order > Total.

Names on the left are the labels printed on your template. Magic Text on the right is where the real value comes from.

Step 5: Test it and save the result

Click Run Test Request. A successful test returns:

• pdf_url — the direct link to the PDF
• download_url — same file, prompts a download
• filename, pages, size_bytes, created_at — extra details you can ignore

Save the link on the record

Add pdf_url as an output property. Then in your Orders collection add a Text property called PDF Link and save pdf_url into it.

Step 6: Show the PDF to your user

Add a second action on the same button: Link, pointed at the PDF Link property.

• The link opens in the device PDF viewer on iOS and Android.
• On a web build it downloads instead.
• To email it, use the same PDF Link property inside an email action or your email tool.

Handling invoices with multiple line items

A document with several products needs its items to arrive as a list, not separate fields.

• Do not drag an Adalo list or relationship (like Current Order > Products) straight into the body.
• Adalo does not send relationships in a format the generator can read, this is where most people get stuck.
• The simple way: build an Items JSON Text property as items are added, then map it to items.
• The proper way: use an External Collection so the item rows come through as real data.

What else you can generate

The same setup produces receipts, quotes, certificates, reports and letters.

• Each item row accepts name, description, quantity and price, up to 500 rows.
• Long documents paginate automatically.
• Swap the template ID in the body to change document type, everything else stays the same.
• Set an accent colour, add your logo, footer payment terms, and extra label/value rows.