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Set up your account

Before using components from the React SDK, see the First document use case to set up your platform account and get the API key.

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Create your document

SFS provides you with two ways of creating documents: by using an API request (API way) or via our React UI (visual way). Let’s create a simple document using our API.

To do this, you can use this request. Learn more here.

cURL
curl -X POST 'https://api.sendforsign.com/api/contract' \
     -H 'X-Sendforsign-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
    "data": {
        "action": "create",
        "clientKey": "CLIENT_KEY",
        "userKey": "USER_KEY",
        "contract": {
            "name": "New contract",
            "value": "<p>Contract text</p>"
        },
        "placeholders": [
            {
                "name": "Placeholder name 1",
                "value": "Placeholder value 1"
            },
            {
                "name": "Placeholder name 2",
                "value": "Placeholder value 2"
            }
        ]
    }
}'

As a response, you will receive a Contract Key:

json
{
    "contract": {
        "createTime": "2024-03-07T15:18:41.000Z",
        "contractKey": "d29b3893-826c-47d0-abdd-c6ed2b691a5c"
    },
    "code": "201",
    "message": "Contract created"
}

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Render your document

Awesome, you’ve just created your document and even added two placeholders to it. To view the document, use the Contract Editor component and enter the Contract Key you’ve just received as a contractKey property for the component.

New contract

By using this component and a Contract Key, you can continue editing the document, adding and removing placeholders and recipients, and do everything you need to with documents. All changes will be saved to this specific document.

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Allow users to recreate documents

In some cases, you may need to allow users to recreate the content of documents that already exist — either by uploading their own Word file or selecting a template. In such cases, you should use the canReDraft=true property of the Contract Editor. This enables users to start the creation process from scratch for a document that already exists.

If the existing document already has placeholders included, the system will also route these flows accordingly:

  • If a user uploads a Word file or creates a document from scratch, the placeholders will remain untouched.
  • If a user selects a template that does not contain placeholders, then the placeholders will remain untouched, and the content will be populated from the selected template.
  • If a user selects a template that already contains placeholders, then the system will do the following:
  1. Populate the content from the template into the document.
  2. Read all the placeholders from the template and all the placeholders from the document and merge them. For placeholders with the same names (on the template side and on the document side), the system will transfer the values from the document’s placeholders to the template’s placeholders.
  3. Document-side placeholders that don’t match any placeholder on the template side will remain untouched.

So, for example, if you have a document with a placeholder Name1-DocValue1, and a template with placeholders Name1-TempValue1 and Name2-TempValue2, the resulting document will contain the content from the template and two placeholders: Name1-DocValue1 and Name2-TempValue2.

Draft a template