Deployment options for WebViewer

There are three main options for deploying WebViewer.

Using the client only mode allows you to view, edit, and manipulate PDF and Office documents directly in the client without a conversion step on a server. WebViewer takes advantage of the latest browser technologies (like WebAssembly) to render and manipulate documents completely on the client side.

Since no work is being done on a server, this allows you to easily scale up the number of concurrent users without paying for more servers. The trade off is that performance is dependent on a user's local machine and a limited set of filetypes can be viewed.

The full API is also available on the client side and includes all of the native API functions. This API can be used to process documents outside of the viewer as seen in these samples .

To enable this API when using the viewer pass in the fullAPI option to the WebViewer constructor. For example:

WebViewer({
  licenseKey: 'Insert commercial license key here after purchase',
  initialDoc: 'YOUR_FILE.pdf',
  fullAPI: true
}, viewerElement);

The reason this option needs to be specified is because the scripts required to be downloaded for the full API are ~2-3 times larger than what is required for the viewer only. If you only want to view PDF documents and won't take advantage of the other Apryse functions then you shouldn't pass the fullAPI option.

See more information about the full API for WebViewer .

WebViewer Server is an optional, easy drop-in backend for WebViewer that offers responsive viewing and compatibility across all client platforms (including mobile), along with scaling performance that approaches purely client-side solutions. It works hand-in-hand with WebViewer on the client, initially serving images then transitioning to client-side rendering. You can quickly get it set up and running in seconds with our Docker Compose script.

See the WebViewer Server guide for more information.

You can also choose to configure your own server and not use our packaged backend. This offers flexibility and control, allowing you to preprocess documents prior to loading them in WebViewer. You create a server that converts your documents into a web optimized XPS file, called XOD, and provide them to WebViewer. By converting a wide range of document formats to XOD, WebViewer is able to deliver consistent results in viewing different document types.

See custom server guide for more information.

Note that although client only mode runs in Internet Explorer and mobile devices it is generally only recommended for modern browsers and more powerful devices.