Get Started with WebViewer via NPM

This guide will show you how to get started with the WebViewer SDK through npm. By the end of this guide, you should be able load WebViewer into any app.

Prior to starting, you should have already installed Node and npm.

Get your Apryse trial key.

Run the following command in your project:

npm i @pdftron/webviewer

This will install the main JS entrypoint, as well as download some static assets required for WebViewer to run.

Next, we must copy the static assets required for WebViewer to run into a public location that will be served via HTTP/HTTPS (usually a dist or build folder). The static files are located in node_modules/@pdftron/webviewer/public.

Below are a few ways you could automate this process:

{
  "scripts": {
    "move-static": "cp -a ./node_modules/@pdftron/webviewer/public/. ./dist/public/webviewer",
    "build": "mybuildscript && npm run move-static"
  }
}

When using WebViewer in your code, you will have to tell it where you copied these static files using the path parameter. Add your own license key in place of 'YOUR_LICENSE_KEY'.

Starting in version 10.2 you can choose to instantiate WebViewer using a web component instead of an iframe. See this guide for more information.

For example, if you copied the static files into dist/public/webviewer, your code would look something like this:

import WebViewer from '@pdftron/webviewer'

WebViewer({
  path: '/public/webviewer',
  licenseKey: 'YOUR_LICENSE_KEY',
}, document.getElementById('viewer'))
  .then(instance => {
    const { UI, Core } = instance;
    const { documentViewer, annotationManager, Tools, Annotations } = Core;
    // call methods from UI, Core, documentViewer and annotationManager as needed

    documentViewer.addEventListener('documentLoaded', () => {
      // call methods relating to the loaded document
    });

    instance.UI.loadDocument('https://pdftron.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/pl/demo-annotated.pdf');
  })