56

Is there any open source Javascript based PDF Viewer available? Any guide to developing this kind of script that renders PDF docs would be helpful.

mhb
  • 743
  • 1
  • 9
  • 14
  • I don't want to use the word "impossible", but suffice it to say that what you're looking for is impractical. – casablanca Aug 22 '10 at 02:44
  • It is possible! 1. use javascript to display a popup telling them to download a reader 2. then use javascript to open the reader download page in a new window? – jqa Aug 22 '10 at 03:01
  • Google Docs does this as it is. And you can embed them in web pages. I personally want to integrate this as a feature in my own sites as I've had problems creep in with Embedded Google Docs (mostly user error introduced by people maintaining sites I create). – James T Snell Oct 04 '11 at 22:05
  • 1
    You can try this http://bloggerplugnplay.blogspot.in/2013/02/javascript-pdf-readerviewer-to-embed-in.html – Code Spy Feb 08 '13 at 06:06

5 Answers5

60

There are some guys at Mozilla working on implementing a PDF reader using HTML5 and JavaScript. It is called pdf.js and one of the developers just made an interesting blog post about the project.

imladris
  • 1,091
  • 10
  • 9
  • 1
    Github: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js, Demo: http://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html – mpen May 01 '13 at 15:41
  • 3
    Does anyone know how to actually implement this? I'm finding it really hard to work out?? Are there any step by step guides out there? – Osu Oct 07 '13 at 17:58
  • `PDF.js v1.0.58 (build: ee545dd) Message: Unexpected server response (204) while retrieving PDF "http://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/compressed.tracemonkey-pldi-09.pdf".` – Ravi Apr 20 '14 at 06:02
  • @Osu In case you or anyone else still needs this: http://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/examples/ this has some useful docs in it, as does their examples stored on the github: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/tree/master/examples/helloworld (see parent directory to helloworld as well for even more examples) – Thomas F. May 27 '15 at 18:42
15

There is an open source HTML5/javascript reader available called Trapeze though its still in its early stages.

Demo site: https://brendandahl.github.io/trapeze-reader/demos/

Github page: https://github.com/brendandahl/trapeze-reader

Disclaimer: I'm the author.

brendan.dahl
  • 175
  • 1
  • 5
9

You can use the Google Docs PDF-viewing widget, if you don't mind having them host the "application" itself.

I had more suggestions, but stack overflow only lets me post one hyperlink as a new user, sorry.

Charles
  • 320
  • 3
  • 6
4

Well it's not even close to the full spec, but there is a JavaScript and Canvas based PDF viewer out there.

Russell Leggett
  • 8,795
  • 3
  • 31
  • 45
4

Check out the HTML5 PDF viewer:

http://flexpaper.devaldi.com/demo/

vsync
  • 118,978
  • 58
  • 307
  • 400
  • 1
    The GPL version only displays PDFs with a Flash viewer, and it is needed that the PDFs are compressed. For on the fly compression it is needed to install SWFTools on the server. – stackex Jun 11 '13 at 14:40