How to Build a Vue.js PDF Viewer with PSPDFKit

In this post, we provide you with a step-by-step guide on how you can deploy PSPDFKit’s Vue.js PDF Viewer. Vue.js is a frontend JavaScript framework for building single-page applications (SPAs) and user interfaces (UIs), and it’s the second-most starred GitHub repository. It enables users to create rapid prototypes and build fast and reliable applications.

What Is a Vue.js PDF Viewer?

A Vue.js PDF viewer lets you 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 Vue.js PDF Viewer

We offer a commercial Vue.js 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 Vue.js PDF Viewer

To demo our Vue.js 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.

Requirements to Get Started

To get started, you’ll need:

• Git
• Node.js (in this article, we’re using version 16.13.0)
• A package manager for installing the Vue command-line interface (CLI) and importing packages — you can use npm or Yarn

Installing the Vue CLI

To work with Vue.js, you need to install Vue CLI, which is standard tooling for Vue.js. It helps you create, build, and run Vue.js applications.

You can install the CLI using npm, which comes with Node.js, or yarn:

npm install -g @vue/cli

yarn global add @vue/cli

You can check the version of Vue by running the following:

vue --version

In this blog post, we’re using Vue CLI version 4.5.15.

Creating the Project

Now, let’s see how to integrate PSPDFKit into your Vue.js project.

1. Vue CLI provides an easy way of creating projects by using the following command:

vue create pspdfkit-vue-project

Here, you’re using the create option with the name of the project you want to create (pspdfkit-vue-project).

It’ll then ask some configuration questions.

2. Select Default (Vue 3) ([Vue 3] babel, eslint) from the list.

3. Now, change the directory to pspdfkit-vue-project:

cd pspdfkit-vue-project

Adding PSPDFKit

1. Install pspdfkit as a dependency with npm or yarn:

npm install pspdfkit

yarn add pspdfkit

2. Now you can start building your Vue.js project. First, create a js directory under the public directory. Go to your terminal and run:

mkdir -p public/js

3. Copy the PSPDFKit for Web library assets to the public/js directory:

cp -R ./node_modules/pspdfkit/dist/pspdfkit-lib public/js/pspdfkit-lib

This will copy the pspdfkit-lib directory from within node_modules/ into the public/js/ directory to make it available to the SDK at runtime.

Displaying the PDF

1. Add the PDF document you want to display to the public directory. You can use our demo document as an example.

2. Add a component wrapper for the PSPDFKit library and save it as src/components/PSPDFKitContainer.vue:

// src/components/PSPDFKitContainer.vue

<template>
	<div class="pdf-container"></div>
</template>

<script>
import PSPDFKit from 'pspdfkit';

export default {
	name: 'PSPDFKit',
	/**
	 * The component receives the `pdfFile` prop, which is of type `String` and is required.
	 */
	props: {
		pdfFile: {
			type: String,
			required: true,
		},
	},
	/**
	 * We wait until the template has been rendered to load the document into the library.
	 */
	mounted() {
		this.loadPSPDFKit().then((instance) => {
			this.$emit('loaded', instance);
		});
	},
	/**
	 * We watch for `pdfFile` prop changes and trigger unloading and loading when there's a new document to load.
	 */
	watch: {
		pdfFile(val) {
			if (val) {
				this.loadPSPDFKit();
			}
		},
	},
	/**
	 * Our component has the `loadPSPDFKit` method. This unloads and cleans up the component and triggers document loading.
	 */
	methods: {
		async loadPSPDFKit() {
			PSPDFKit.unload('.pdf-container');
			return PSPDFKit.load({
				// To access the `pdfFile` from props, use `this` keyword.
				document: this.pdfFile,
				container: '.pdf-container',
			});
		},
	},

	/**
	 * Clean up when the component is unmounted so it's ready to load another document (not needed in this example).
	 */
	beforeUnmount() {
		PSPDFKit.unload('.pdf-container');
	},
};
</script>

<style scoped>
.pdf-container {
	height: 100vh;
}
</style>

Here’s what’s happening in the component:

• The template section is rendering a div with the pdf-container class. This will help you declaratively bind the rendered DOM to the underlying component instance’s data.

• The script section is defining a Vue.js instance named PSPDFKit and creating methods for mounting, loading, and unloading PDF files into the pdf-container.

• The style section is defining the height of the container.

3. Now, replace the contents of src/App.vue with the following:

// src/App.vue

<template>
	<div id="app">
		<label for="file-upload" class="custom-file-upload">
			Open PDF
		</label>
		<input
			id="file-upload"
			type="file"
			@change="openDocument"
			class="btn"
		/>
		<PSPDFKitContainer :pdfFile="pdfFile" @loaded="handleLoaded" />
	</div>
</template>

<script>
import PSPDFKitContainer from '@/components/PSPDFKitContainer';

export default {
	data() {
		return {
			pdfFile: this.pdfFile || '/example.pdf',
		};
	},
	/**
	 * Render the `PSPDFKitContainer` component.
	 */
	components: {
		PSPDFKitContainer,
	},
	/**
	 * Our component has two methods — one to check when the document is loaded, and the other to open the document.
	 */
	methods: {
		handleLoaded(instance) {
			console.log('PSPDFKit has loaded: ', instance);
			// Do something.
		},

		openDocument() {
			// To access the Vue instance data properties, use `this` keyword.
			if (this.pdfFile) {
				window.URL.revokeObjectURL(this.pdfFile);
			}
			this.pdfFile = window.URL.createObjectURL(
				event.target.files[0],
			);
		},
	},
};
</script>

<style>
#app {
	text-align: center;
	color: #2c3e50;
}

body {
	margin: 0;
}

input[type='file'] {
	display: none;
}

.custom-file-upload {
	border: 1px solid #ccc;
	border-radius: 4px;
	display: inline-block;
	padding: 6px 12px;
	cursor: pointer;
	background: #4a8fed;
	padding: 10px;
	color: #fff;
	font: inherit;
	font-size: 16px;
	font-weight: bold;
}
</style>

• In the template section, you have a file upload input and the PSPDFKitContainer component.

Vue.js uses directives to handle some types of functionality. For the input field, you’re using the 'v-on' directive to attach an event listener to the element. In this case, it’s the 'change' event. There’s a shortcut to 'v-on' that removes the keyword and uses an '@' symbol instead.

v-on:change="openDocument"
v-on:loaded="handleLoaded"
// Or
@change="openDocument"
@loaded="handleLoaded"

Similar to the input field, for the PSPDFKitContainer component, you’re using the v-bind directive to bind the pdfFile property to the pdfFile property of the component and attaching an event listener for the loaded event:

<PSPDFKitContainer :pdfFile="pdfFile" @loaded="handleLoaded" />

• In the script section, you can see the implementation of the handleLoaded and openDocument methods. Also, there’s a data function that returns the pdfFile property.

The data keeps track of reactive state within the current component. It’s always a function and returns an object. The object’s top-level properties are exposed via the component instance.

• In the style section, there are styles for custom file input, and there are some general styles for the app.

4. Start the app:

npm run serve

yarn serve

You can see the application running on localhost:8080.

If you can’t see your PDF file rendered in the browser, make sure you actually uploaded a PDF file inside the public directory.

In the demo application, you can open different PDF files by clicking the Open PDF button. You can add signatures, annotations, stamps, and more.

💡 Tip: All the finished code is available on GitHub. 😎 You can find the example code for Vue 2 in the vue-2 branch.

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 Vue.js guides:

• Adding annotations
• Editing documents
• Filling PDF forms
• Adding signatures to documents
• Real-time collaboration
• Redaction
• UI customization

Conclusion

You should now have our Vue.js 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 PDF viewer using web frameworks like Angular, jQuery, 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.