LintPDF LintPDF

External Preflight Imports

Submit a PDF plus your existing PitStop, callas, Acrobat, or LintPDF-native preflight report and open the results in the interactive viewer.

External Preflight Imports

External imports let you keep running preflight in your tool of choice — Enfocus PitStop, callas pdfToolbox, Adobe Acrobat Preflight, or anything that emits XML/JSON — while using LintPDF as the viewer, reporting, and distribution surface. You upload the PDF plus your report; we parse the report into LintPDF findings and render them identically to engine-produced findings.

When to use it

  • You’ve already invested in a preflight toolchain and don’t want to rerun the same checks in LintPDF.
  • You want the interactive viewer, branded PDF/HTML reports, share links, and approval workflows layered on top of findings your operators trust.
  • You want to consolidate reporting across teams that use different preflight tools.

Viewer tier customers

Most external-import workloads land naturally on the Viewer tier ($15 / month, 150 files / month) — you already have your preflight findings, you just need a hosted viewer + share link. On the Viewer tier:

  • preflight_source=external submissions are allowed and behave exactly as documented below.
  • preflight_source=minimal is also allowed, for jobs where you want the viewer with nothing else.
  • preflight_source=engine returns 403 plan_upgrade_required — upgrade to Starter if you want to run our 500+ check pipeline.
  • Report downloads (PDF / JSON / XML) are disabled. The output is the interactive viewer share link only.
  • Annotations are off.

See Pricing for the full tier matrix.

Supported formats

external_formatToolNotes
pitstop_xmlEnfocus PitStopHandles <Hit>, <Error>, <Warning>, <Info> with page + bbox.
callas_jsoncallas pdfToolboxJSON variant.
callas_xmlcallas pdfToolboxXML variant.
acrobat_xmlAdobe Acrobat PreflightXML export (Acrobat Pro DC “Save As XML”).
lintpdf_jsonAny toolCanonical LintPDF-native schema — see Import Schema.

Omit external_format entirely to let LintPDF auto-detect based on the file’s root element or JSON shape. Auto-detect is reliable on all shipped formats; set external_format explicitly only if auto-detect mis-classifies a borderline payload.

If your tool doesn’t emit any of the above, use a Custom Import Mapping — a tenant-defined parser that translates proprietary XML or JSON into LintPDF findings with no parser-level change on our side.

Submission

The PDF is required. The report is required unless you’re using a custom mapping. Both ride on the same multipart/form-data request to POST /api/v1/jobs.

PitStop XML

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@pitstop-report.xml \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F external_format=pitstop_xml \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

callas JSON

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@callas-report.json \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F external_format=callas_json \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

callas XML

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@callas-report.xml \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F external_format=callas_xml \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

Adobe Acrobat XML

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@acrobat-preflight.xml \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F external_format=acrobat_xml \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

LintPDF native JSON

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@findings.json \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F external_format=lintpdf_json \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

Auto-detect variant (omit external_format):

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_live_..." \
  -F file=@brochure.pdf \
  -F external_report=@report.xml \
  -F preflight_source=external \
  -F profile_id=lintpdf-default

Response

Every submission returns 202 Accepted with a job ID:

{
  "job_id": "7c9a4b0e-5d3a-4f2b-92e1-1a3c0b9d8e4f",
  "status": "pending",
  "message": "Job submitted successfully"
}

Poll GET /api/v1/jobs/{job_id} until status=complete, then open the interactive viewer at https://app.lintpdf.com/dashboard/preflight/{job_id}/viewer or generate a share link via POST /api/v1/jobs/{job_id}/reports. External-mode jobs complete in under three seconds in almost every case because no analyzers run.

Findings taxonomy

Each parsed finding lands in the job with:

  • severity — error, warning, or advisory (your tool’s severity is normalised with a fuzzy map, then overridden by any explicit severity_map on custom mappings).
  • message — the human-readable description your tool emitted.
  • page_num — 1-indexed page number.
  • bbox — [x0, y0, x1, y1] in PDF points when the report carries geometry; used to draw highlights in the viewer.
  • inspection_id — a stable identifier derived from your tool’s check ID so repeated findings on different jobs collate correctly in the dashboard.
  • source — external:pitstop, external:callas, external:acrobat, external:lintpdf_json, or external:custom:<mapping-id> for a custom mapping.
  • category, object_id, object_type, iso_clause — optional metadata preserved when the upstream report carries them.

Capabilities on external jobs

External reports usually carry findings but rarely carry separations, total-area-coverage (TAC), font-embedding detail, or image-resolution maps. LintPDF marks those capabilities false on the job and surfaces them in the viewer as Load buttons. One click fills the capability by running just the responsible analyzer — the job’s findings remain authoritative (we don’t second-guess your tool) but the viewer gains separations preview, TAC heatmap, or full font/image inspection on demand.

See Viewer Capabilities & On-Demand Fill-In for the full capability registry.

Error reference

StatusReason
400PDF is corrupt, encrypted, or not a PDF.
403Custom profile or brand profile not owned by your tenant.
409external_report provided but preflight_source is engine, or missing when preflight_source=external and no mapping_id.
413external_report exceeds the 50 MB cap.
422preflight_source is not one of engine/external/minimal; or external_format is not in the supported enum; or external_report is empty; or the report parser rejected the payload (wrong format vs declared external_format).
429Plan rate limit exceeded.

Worked examples

Copy-pasteable samples are hosted on this site: