*Please note:* This removes top level await from the GENERIC builds of the PDF.js library. Despite top level await being supported in all modern browsers/environments, note [the MDN compatibility data](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/await#browser_compatibility), it seems that many frameworks and build-tools unfortunately have trouble with it. Hence, in order to reduce the influx of support requests regarding top level await it thus seems that we'll have to try and fix this. Given that top level await is only needed for Node.js environments, to load packages/polyfills, we re-factor things to limit the asynchronicity to that environment. The "best" solution, with the least likelihood of causing future problems, would probably be to await the load of Node.js packages/polyfills e.g. at the top of the `getDocument`-function. Unfortunately that doesn't work though, since that's a *synchronous* function that we cannot change without breaking "the world". Hence we instead await the load of Node.js packages/polyfills together with the `PDFWorker` initialization, since that's the *first point* of asynchronicity during initialization/loading of a PDF document. The reason that this works is that the Node.js packages/polyfills are only needed during fetching of the PDF document respectively during rendering, neither of which can happen *until* the worker has been initialized. Hopefully this won't cause any future problems, since looking at the history of the PDF.js project I don't believe that we've (thus far) ever needed a Node.js dependency at an earlier point. This new pattern for accessing Node.js packages/polyfills will also require some care during development *and* importantly reviewing, to ensure that no new top level await is added in the main code-base. |
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docs | ||
examples | ||
extensions | ||
external | ||
l10n | ||
src | ||
test | ||
web | ||
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.gitattributes | ||
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.gitpod.Dockerfile | ||
.gitpod.yml | ||
.mailmap | ||
.prettierignore | ||
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.stylelintrc | ||
AUTHORS | ||
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md | ||
EXPORT | ||
gulpfile.mjs | ||
LICENSE | ||
package-lock.json | ||
package.json | ||
pdfjs.config | ||
README.md | ||
tsconfig.json |
PDF.js 
PDF.js is a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer that is built with HTML5.
PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Our goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.
Contributing
PDF.js is an open source project and always looking for more contributors. To get involved, visit:
- Issue Reporting Guide
- Code Contribution Guide
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Good Beginner Bugs
- Projects
Feel free to stop by our Matrix room for questions or guidance.
Getting Started
Online demo
Please note that the "Modern browsers" version assumes native support for the latest JavaScript features; please also see this wiki page.
-
Modern browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html
-
Older browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/legacy/web/viewer.html
Browser Extensions
Firefox
PDF.js is built into version 19+ of Firefox.
Chrome
- The official extension for Chrome can be installed from the Chrome Web Store. This extension is maintained by @Rob--W.
- Build Your Own - Get the code as explained below and issue
gulp chromium
. Then open Chrome, go toTools > Extension
and load the (unpackaged) extension from the directorybuild/chromium
.
Getting the Code
To get a local copy of the current code, clone it using git:
$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.git
$ cd pdf.js
Next, install Node.js via the official package or via nvm. You need to install the gulp package globally (see also gulp's getting started):
$ npm install -g gulp-cli@^2.3.0
If you prefer to not install gulp-cli
globally, you have to prefix all the gulp
commands with npx
(for example, npx gulp server
instead of gulp server
).
If everything worked out, install all dependencies for PDF.js:
$ npm install
Note
On MacOS M1/M2 you may see some
node-gyp
-related errors when runningnpm install
. This is because one of our dependencies,"canvas"
, does not provide pre-built binaries for this platform and insteadnpm
will try to build it from source. Please make sure to first install the necessary native dependencies usingbrew
: https://github.com/Automattic/node-canvas#compiling.
Finally, you need to start a local web server as some browsers do not allow opening
PDF files using a file://
URL. Run:
$ gulp server
and then you can open:
Please keep in mind that this assumes the latest version of Mozilla Firefox; refer to Building PDF.js for non-development usage of the PDF.js library.
It is also possible to view all test PDF files on the right side by opening:
Building PDF.js
In order to bundle all src/
files into two production scripts and build the generic
viewer, run:
$ gulp generic
If you need to support older browsers, run:
$ gulp generic-legacy
This will generate pdf.js
and pdf.worker.js
in the build/generic/build/
directory (respectively build/generic-legacy/build/
).
Both scripts are needed but only pdf.js
needs to be included since pdf.worker.js
will
be loaded by pdf.js
. The PDF.js files are large and should be minified for production.
Using PDF.js in a web application
To use PDF.js in a web application you can choose to use a pre-built version of the library
or to build it from source. We supply pre-built versions for usage with NPM and Bower under
the pdfjs-dist
name. For more information and examples please refer to the
wiki page on this subject.
Including via a CDN
PDF.js is hosted on several free CDNs:
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/pdfjs-dist
- https://cdnjs.com/libraries/pdf.js
- https://unpkg.com/pdfjs-dist/
Learning
You can play with the PDF.js API directly from your browser using the live demos below:
More examples can be found in the examples folder. Some of them are using the pdfjs-dist package, which can be built and installed in this repo directory via gulp dist-install
command.
For an introduction to the PDF.js code, check out the presentation by our contributor Julian Viereck:
More learning resources can be found at:
The API documentation can be found at:
Questions
Check out our FAQs and get answers to common questions:
Talk to us on Matrix:
File an issue: