Setup PDF.js in a website

You can choose to use a pre-built version of PDF.js or build PDF.js from source.

Pre-built PDF.js

With npm

This works by loading the file pdfjs-dist/build/pdf.js after you have installed PDF.js using:

npm install pdfjs-dist

With Browserify or Webpack

If you use Browserify or Webpack there is an easy way to require the files:

// In your Webpack config:
//
// Install `npm install url-loader` first.
// This will enable you to get the url of the worker and the pdf to use in the index.js.
// Notice that for the build process it might need some extra work.
webpackConfig.module.loaders = {
    test: /\.pdf$|pdf\.worker\.js$/,
    loader: "url-loader?limit=10000"
}

// in index.js
require('pdfjs-dist/build/pdf');
require('pdfjs-dist/web/pdf_viewer'); // Only if you need `PDFJS.PDFViewer`
// Webpack returns a string to the url because we configured the url-loader.
PDFJS.workerSrc = require('pdfjs-dist/build/pdf.worker.js');
var url = require('assets/books/my book.pdf'); 
PDFJS.getDocument(url).then(function(pdf) {/* Continue the normal tutorial from the README.*/})

From examples

When the source code of PDF.js changes, the online demo is automatically updated. The source of all demo files can easily be accessed at https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/tree/gh-pages. These files can also be uploaded to your server to use PDF.js to display PDF files from your website.

1. Download https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/archive/gh-pages.zip.

2. Extract the ZIP file (a directory called "pdf.js-gh-pages" will be created).

3. Copy the following directories to your website:

   • pdf.js-gh-pages/build/
   • pdf.js-gh-pages/web/
     The web/ directory contains a 1 MB PDF file called "compressed.tracemonkey-pldi-09.pdf". This file is only used as an example for the demo and can safely be removed.

4. If you want to open a PDF from your website with PDF.js, simply link to the viewer and pass the location of the PDF file. For example:

   <a href="/web/viewer.html?file=%2Fyourpdf.pdf">Open yourpdf.pdf with PDF.js</a>

Build PDF.js from source

After cloning PDF.js, you can build PDF.js from source by running node make generic in Git Bash or another terminal. This will create the built PDF.js in the build folder, which you can upload to your server. Note that you must include compatibility.js in order to support browsers like IE8+.