MichalGrzegorzak / PdfiumViewer

PDF viewer based on Google's PDFium.

PdfiumViewer

Apache 2.0 License.

Download from NuGet.

Introduction

PdfiumViewer is a PDF viewer based on the PDFium project.

PdfiumViewer provides a number of components to work with PDF files:

• PdfDocument is the base class used to render PDF documents;

• PdfRenderer is a WinForms control that can render a PdfDocument;

• PdfiumViewer is a WinForms control that hosts a PdfRenderer control and adds a toolbar to save the PDF file or print it.

Compatibility

The PdfiumViewer library has been tested with Windows XP and Windows 8, and is fully compatible with both.

Using the library

To use the library, you must first add a reference to the NuGet package.

After you've added this reference, two files will be added to your project:

• x86\pdfium.dll is the 32-bit version of the Pdfium library;

• x64\pdfium.dll is the 64-bit version of the Pdfium library.

You have two options. If your application is 32-bit only or 64-bit only, you can remove the DLL that won't be used. You can leave this file in the x86 or x64 directory, or move it to the root of your project. PdfiumViewer will find the DLL in both cases.

When building your project, the pdfiumdll library(s) must be placed next to your application, either in the root or the x86 or x64 sub directory. The easiest way to accomplish this is by changing the properties of that file, changing the Copy to Output Directory setting to Copy always.

Note on the PdfViewer control

The PdfiumViewer library primarily consists out of three components:

• The PdfViewer control. This control provides a host for the PdfRenderer control and has a default toolbar with limited functionality;
• The PdfRenderer control. This control implements the raw PDF renderer. This control displays a PDF document, provides zooming and scrolling functionality and exposes methods to perform more advanced actions;
• The PdfDocument class provides access to the PDF document and wraps the Pdfium library.

The PdfViewer control should only be used when you have a very simple use case and where the buttons available on the toolbar provide enough functionality for you. This toolbar will not be extended with new buttons or with functionality to hide buttons. The reason for this is that the PdfViewer control is just meant to get you started. If you need more advanced functionality, you should create your own control with your own toolbar, e.g. by starting out with the PdfViewer control. Also, because people currently are already using the PdfViewer control, adding more functionality to this toolbar would be a breaking change. See issue #41 for more information.

Building PDFium

To build PDFium for Windows, you need Visual Studio.

The PDFium source code does not have project files for Visual Studio. The full instructions to get to a project you can open in Visual Studio, you need to follow the steps at https://code.google.com/p/pdfium/wiki/Build.

One addition to the instructions on the website is that the build\gyp_pdfium command is a Python script. To execute this, execute python build\gyp_pdfium. Also, one of the projects require the Python executable to be in the PATH. depot_tools has a Python which can be used for this.

After this, you can open the all.sln solution from the build directory. The project is configured to create static libraries. However, we need a dynamic library for PdfiumViewer. To have it generate a dynamic library, the following changes must be made to the configuration of the pdfium project:

• Before opening the project properties, first set the Configuration to Release;

• In the General tab, Configuration Type must be set to Dynamic Library (.dll);

• In the C/C++ | General tab, the Additional Include Directories must get the extra directory v8. The full value should become third_party\freetype\include;v8;v8\include;%(AdditionalIncludeDirectories);

• In the C/C++ | Preprocessor tab, the Preprocessor Definition FPDFSDK_EXPORTS must be added to have the DLL export the correct symbols;

• In the Linker | Input tab, the Additional Dependencies must be set to. This dialog appears after you've saved and re-opened the project configuration:

kernel32.lib
user32.lib
advapi32.lib
gdi32.lib
winmm.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\bigint.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fdrm.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\formfiller.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fpdfapi.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fpdfdoc.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fpdftext.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_agg.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_freetype.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_lcms2.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_libjpeg.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_libopenjpeg.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_lpng.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fx_zlib.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fxcodec.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fxcrt.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fxedit.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\fxge.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\gmock.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\gtest.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\gtest_main.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\icui18n.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\icuuc.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\javascript.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\jsapi.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\pdfwindow.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_base_0.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_base_1.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_base_2.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_base_3.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_libbase.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_libplatform.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_nosnapshot.lib
$(OutDir)\lib\v8_snapshot.lib

• The platform toolset must be set to support Windows XP. The easiest way to do this is by performing a search and replace on all .vcxproj files in the PDFium source directory. For Visual Studio 2013 you need to replace <PlatformToolset>v120</PlatformToolset> with <PlatformToolset>v120_xp</PlatformToolset>. For Visual Studio 2015 you need to replace <PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset> with <PlatformToolset>v140_xp</PlatformToolset>. You may need to install extra Visual Studio components. When you load the project (you can force this by right clicking ont he project and choosing Reload), Visual Studio will prompt you if necessary;

• A few methods need to be added to allow Pdfium to correctly initialize Pdfium. This file can be found in the Contrib directory and must be copied to the pdfium\fpdfsdk\src directory. After the file has been copied, it must be added to the project by right clicking on the src directory in the pdfium project and then choosing Add | Existing item. Select the copied source file and add it to the project.

You may have to run the build a few times because the dependencies don't appear to be resolved correctly. For me, the second time the build completes successfully.

After you've made these changes and compiled the solution, you will get a valid DLL which can be copied into the "Libraries/Pdfium" directory of the project.

To build the 64-bit version of the Pdfium library, drop down the Release option in the toolbar and open the Configuration Manager. There, change the Active solution platform to x64. The steps to update the project configuration explained above need to be performed again because they are dependent on the platform.

Bugs

Bugs should be reported through github at http://github.com/pvginkel/PdfiumViewer/issues.

License

PdfiumViewer is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. See the license details for how PDFium is licensed.