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. However, do not that the standard DLL's won't work on Window XP. To build for Windows XP, you need:

• The DLL's from the directory Libraries\Pdfium\Without V8;
• Also, you need to distribute a recent version of dbghelp.dll. These are also located in the Libraries\Pdfium\Without V8 directory. Note that these are not part of the standard distribution and won't be loaded automatically.

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 pdfium.dll 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 that in the directory Libraries\Pdfium\Without V8, there are versions of the Pdfium DLL's without V8 support. These are a lot smaller and work on Windows XP. See Compatibility above for instructions on how to use these.

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

Instructions to build the PDFium library can be found on the Building PDFium wiki page. However, if you are just looking to use the PdfiumViewer component or looking for a compiled version of PDFium, these steps are not required. A compiled version of the PDFium library is included in the NuGet package and precompiled libraries can be found at https://github.com/pvginkel/PdfiumViewer/tree/master/Libraries/Pdfium.

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.