How to Build a JavaScript PDF Viewer with PSPDFKit
In this post, we provide you with a step-by-step guide on how you can deploy PSPDFKit’s JavaScript PDF Viewer.
What Is a JavaScript PDF Viewer?
A JavaScript PDF viewer uses JavaScript to render and view PDF documents in a web browser without the need to download it to your hard drive or use an external application like a PDF reader.
PSPDFKit JavaScript PDF Viewer
We offer a commercial JavaScript PDF viewer library that can easily be integrated into your web application. It comes with 30+ features that let you view, annotate, edit, and sign documents directly in your browser. Out of the box, it has a polished and flexible UI that you can extend or simplify based on your unique use case.
- A prebuilt and polished UI for an improved user experience
- 15+ prebuilt annotation tools to enable document collaboration
- Support for more file types with client-side PDF, MS Office, and image viewing
- Dedicated support from engineers to speed up integration
Example of Our JavaScript PDF Viewer
To demo our JavaScript PDF viewer, upload a PDF, JPG, PNG, or TIFF file by clicking Open Document under the Standalone option (if you don’t see this option, select Choose Example from the dropdown). Once your document is displayed in the viewer, try drawing freehand, adding a note, or applying a crop or an e-signature.
If you prefer a video tutorial, you can watch our step-by-step guide.
Requirements to Get Started
To get started, you’ll need:
- The latest stable version of Node.js.
- A package manager compatible with npm. This guide contains usage examples for Yarn and the npm client (installed with Node.js by default).
Adding PSPDFKit to Your Project
-
Install the
pspdfkitpackage fromnpm. If you prefer, you can also download PSPDFKit for Web manually:
npm install pspdfkit
-
For PSPDFKit for Web to work, it’s necessary to copy the directory containing all the required library files (artifacts) to the
assetsfolder. Use the following command to do this:
cp -R ./node_modules/pspdfkit/dist/ ./assets/
Make sure your assets directory contains the pspdfkit.js file and a pspdfkit-lib directory with the library assets.
Integrating into Your Project
-
Add the PDF document you want to display to your project’s directory. You can use our demo document as an example.
-
Add an empty
<div>element with a defined height to where PSPDFKit will be mounted:
<div id="pspdfkit" style="height: 100vh;"></div>
-
Include
pspdfkit.jsin your HTML page:
<script src="assets/pspdfkit.js"></script>-
Initialize PSPDFKit for Web in JavaScript by calling
PSPDFKit.load():
<script>
PSPDFKit.load({
container: "#pspdfkit",
document: "document.pdf" // Add the path to your document here.
})
.then(function(instance) {
console.log("PSPDFKit loaded", instance);
})
.catch(function(error) {
console.error(error.message);
});
</script>You can see the full index.html file below:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>My App</title> <!-- Provide proper viewport information so that the layout works on mobile devices. --> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> </head> <body> <!-- Element where PSPDFKit will be mounted. --> <div id="pspdfkit" style="height: 100vh;"></div> <script src="assets/pspdfkit.js"></script> <script> PSPDFKit.load({ container: '#pspdfkit', document: 'document.pdf', }) .then(function (instance) { console.log('PSPDFKit loaded', instance); }) .catch(function (error) { console.error(error.message); }); </script> </body> </html>
Serving Your Website
You’ll use the npm serve package to serve your project.
-
Install the
servepackage:
npm install --global serve
-
Serve the contents of the current directory:
serve -l 8080 .
-
Navigate to http://localhost:8080 to view the website.
Adding Even More Capabilities
Once you’ve deployed your viewer, you can start customizing it to meet your specific requirements or easily add more capabilities. To help you get started, here are some of our most popular JavaScript guides:
- Adding annotations
- Editing documents
- Filling PDF forms
- Adding signatures to documents
- Real-time collaboration
- Redaction
- UI customization
Conclusion
You should now have our JavaScript PDF viewer up and running in your web application. If you hit any snags, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team for help.
You can also integrate our JavaScript PDF viewer using web frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, and React.js. To see a list of all web frameworks, start your free trial. Or, launch our demo to see our viewer in action.
Hulya is a frontend web developer and technical writer at PSPDFKit who enjoys creating responsive, scalable, and maintainable web experiences. She’s passionate about open source, web accessibility, cybersecurity privacy, and blockchain.
