2 creditsPDF to Chunks API — chunk a PDF for retrieval-augmented generation
Heading-aware, table-safe chunking with a real tokenizer — built for feeding a vector store, not just cutting text at a fixed length.
PDF to Chunks splits a document into pieces sized by a real tokenizer (tiktoken, cl100k_base), not a character count. strategy: "heading" (the default) breaks at detected headings and reports each chunk's heading path; "page" breaks one chunk per page; "fixed" ignores structure and uses pure token windows, optionally overlapping via overlap. Every strategy keeps a detected table's rows together in one chunk rather than splitting it mid-row, and repeated headers/footers (page numbers, running titles) are detected across the document and stripped out of the chunk text before it's returned.
How does the PDF to Chunks API work?
One HTTP request from any language. Every ASHDOCS endpoint uses the same X-API-Key header.
curl -X POST https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks \
-H "X-API-Key: ash_live_..." \
-F "file=@document.pdf" \
-F 'options={"max_tokens":500,"overlap":50}'import requests
r = requests.post(
"https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks",
headers={"X-API-Key": "ash_live_..."},
files=[("file", open("document.pdf", "rb"))],
data={"options": '{"max_tokens":500,"overlap":50}'},
)
job = r.json()
print(job["status"], job.get("url"))import { readFile } from "node:fs/promises";
const form = new FormData();
form.append("file", new Blob([await readFile("document.pdf")]), "document.pdf");
form.append("options", JSON.stringify({"max_tokens":500,"overlap":50}));
const res = await fetch("https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks", {
method: "POST",
headers: { "X-API-Key": "ash_live_..." },
body: form,
});
const job = await res.json();
console.log(job.status, job.url);using var client = new HttpClient();
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("X-API-Key", "ash_live_...");
using var form = new MultipartFormDataContent();
form.Add(new ByteArrayContent(await File.ReadAllBytesAsync("document.pdf")), "file", "document.pdf");
form.Add(new StringContent("{\"max_tokens\":500,\"overlap\":50}"), "options");
var res = await client.PostAsync("https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks", form);
var job = await res.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
Console.WriteLine(job);import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
public class Sample {
static final String BOUNDARY = "AshdocsBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW";
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
ByteArrayOutputStream body = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
addFile(body, "file", "document.pdf");
addField(body, "options", "{\"max_tokens\":500,\"overlap\":50}");
body.write(("--" + BOUNDARY + "--\r\n").getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
HttpRequest req = HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create("https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks"))
.header("X-API-Key", "ash_live_...")
.header("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + BOUNDARY)
.POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofByteArray(body.toByteArray()))
.build();
HttpResponse<String> res = HttpClient.newHttpClient().send(req, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
System.out.println(res.body());
}
static void addFile(ByteArrayOutputStream body, String name, String path) throws Exception {
body.write(("--" + BOUNDARY + "\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + name + "\"; filename=\""
+ Path.of(path).getFileName() + "\"\r\nContent-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n").getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
body.write(Files.readAllBytes(Path.of(path)));
body.write("\r\n".getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
}
static void addField(ByteArrayOutputStream body, String name, String value) throws Exception {
body.write(("--" + BOUNDARY + "\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + name + "\"\r\n\r\n"
+ value + "\r\n").getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
}
}#include <stdio.h>
#include <curl/curl.h>
int main(void) {
CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if (!curl) return 1;
struct curl_slist *headers = NULL;
headers = curl_slist_append(headers, "X-API-Key: ash_live_...");
curl_mime *mime = curl_mime_init(curl);
curl_mimepart *part;
part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
curl_mime_name(part, "file");
curl_mime_filedata(part, "document.pdf");
part = curl_mime_addpart(mime);
curl_mime_name(part, "options");
curl_mime_data(part, "{\"max_tokens\":500,\"overlap\":50}", CURL_ZERO_TERMINATED);
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_MIMEPOST, mime);
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://www.ashdocs.com/api/v2/tools/pdf-to-chunks");
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, headers);
CURLcode rc = curl_easy_perform(curl);
printf("\n");
curl_mime_free(mime);
curl_slist_free_all(headers);
curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
return rc == CURLE_OK ? 0 : 1;
}Common use cases
- →Preparing a document for a RAG pipeline's vector store
- →Chunking a long manual for an LLM context window
- →Splitting a contract into sections for per-clause embedding