WebViewer HTML

WebViewer is a powerful JavaScript-based PDF Library that's part of the Apryse SDK. It allows you to view and annotate PDFs, MS Office, images, videos and web pages on your web app with a fully customizable UI.

This is an addon for WebViewer that allows loading HTML web pages so that HTML pages can be annotated. You can watch the demo on YouTube or read a blog.

Let me know how you are planning to use WebViewer HTML or if you have any feedback on any feature missing. You can email me directly.

Disclaimer

This project is experimental. A proxy server is used to serve webpage assets. This is done to get around various security issues, when loading a webpage in an iframe. This works for a good amount of pages but there are many exceptions. If you have a subset of web pages that you would like to support then we recommend forking this repository and making the necessary fixes. We won't be making those changes because it would likely result in other pages failing.

What's new?

• Highlight, underline, draw shapes, callouts, stamps
• View a live web page
• Search for wording on the page using different search modes
• Get access to all the links present on the web page

Demo

https://showcase.apryse.com/webviewer-html

Sample Integration

Try out the react sample here. It shows how to integrate WebViewer, WebViewer-HTML, and webviewer-html-proxy-server.

Initial setup

Before you begin, make sure your development environment includes Node.js and npm.

Install

npm install @pdftron/webviewer-html

How to use

WebViewer-HTML requires the server component, @pdftron/webviewer-html-proxy-server. This proxy server solves CORS issues. It will also parse the page for text and links, allowing you to use text annotations and page navigation.

Call the createServer function in your server component and pass in an object that includes SERVER_ROOT and PORT.

const HTMLProxyServer = require('@pdftron/webviewer-html-proxy-server');
HTMLProxyServer.createServer({
  SERVER_ROOT: `http://localhost`,
  PORT: 3100
});

When making the request to the proxy-server, make sure to pass along { credentials: 'include' } to be able to send cookies in cross-origin requests. Read more here.

You can either load HTML pages from URLs, or static resources using the relative path. This API is available to load an HTML page by calling loadHTMLPage.

import WebViewer from '@pdftron/webviewer';
import { initializeHTMLViewer } from '@pdftron/webviewer-html';

WebViewer(
  {
    path: 'lib',
  },
  document.getElementById('viewer')
).then(async (instance) => {
  const url = 'https://apryse.com/';
  const htmlProxyServerUrl = 'http://localhost:3100';

  // Tell webviewer-html-proxy-server that you want to proxy this URL
  const proxyUrlRes =
    await fetch(
      `${htmlProxyServerUrl}/pdftron-proxy?url=${url}`, 
      { credentials: 'include' },
    );

  const { validUrl } = await proxyUrlRes.json();
  const { href, origin, pathname } = new URL(validUrl);
  const hrefWithoutOrigin = href.split(origin)[1] || pathname;

  const license = `---- Insert commercial license key here after purchase ----`;

  // Extends WebViewer to allow loading HTML5 files from URL or static folder.
  const { loadHTMLPage } = await initializeHTMLViewer(instance, { license });

  loadHTMLPage({
    iframeUrl: `${htmlProxyServerUrl}${hrefWithoutOrigin}`,
    // URL that is being proxied
    urlToProxy: validUrl,
    width: 1440,
    height: 770,
  });
});

Passing custom HTTP headers to the proxy request

For version v1.9.6 and above, the proxy server can accept extra custom HTTP headers using customheaders when making the request, read more here. Make sure to stringify your custom headers before passing them to the value of customheaders.

// Tell webviewer-html-proxy-server that you want to proxy this URL
const proxyUrlRes =
  await fetch(
    `${htmlProxyServerUrl}/pdftron-proxy?url=${url}`, 
    { 
      credentials: 'include',
      headers: {
        customheaders: JSON.stringify({
          Authorization: 'token',
          'custom-header': 'custom token',
        }),
        // invalid values: {}, { key: value }, "random string that can't be parsed"
      },
    },
  );

For WebViewer v8.5 and above

New versions of WebViewer v8.5 and above requires the disableVirtualDisplayMode: true constructor option. See documentation.

WebViewer(
  {
    path: 'lib',
    disableVirtualDisplayMode: true,
  },
  document.getElementById('viewer')
).then(async (instance) => {
  // ...
});

Detecting when the proxy is loaded

You can add a proxyLoaded event listener to detect when the proxy iframe is fully loaded. This event comes from the DOMContentLoaded event attached to the proxy website.

import WebViewer from '@pdftron/webviewer';

WebViewer(
  {
    path: 'lib',
  },
  document.getElementById('viewer')
).then((instance) => {
  const { docViewer } = instance;
  docViewer.addEventListener('proxyLoaded', listener);
});

Version 3.x

Older versions 3.x of WebViewer-HTML used website scraping to save the website as a snapshot in time, without the need for a separate server component. Please refer to this sample that scrapes the content of a live website and allows you to annotate. This sample along with WebViewer-HTML v3.x are no longer maintained, as the proxy solution allows to better capture accurately the content of a live website. Read more here.

Adding a license key

Beginning with version 3.x, we have added a watermark on all HTML pages being viewed in the demo mode. Version 3.x introduces quite a number of feature additions including text tools like highlighting and strikeout, as well as searching capabilities. To remove the Apryse Demo watermark, please pass the license key to the function. The license key can be obtained on Apryse's website.

WebViewer(
  {
    path: 'lib',
  },
  document.getElementById('viewer')
).then(async (instance) => {
  const license = `---- Insert commercial license key here after purchase ----`;
  const { loadHTMLPage } = await initializeHTMLViewer(instance, { license });
});

For versions v4.5x and below, please pass the licence key to loadHTMLPage.

loadHTMLPage({
  // Your webviewer-html-proxy-server url
  iframeUrl: 'http://localhost:3100',
  // URL that is being proxied
  urlToProxy: 'https://apryse.com/',
  width: 1440,
  height: 770,
  license: 'license-key-goes-here',
});

Ready-to-deploy Collaboration Sample

We have put together a ready to deploy collaboration sample based on collaboration.pdftron.com. You can read about it in a blog and get started with a sample.

Please note that this is only supported with Webviewer-HTML v3.x.

Documentation

Client API documentation

Server API documentation

License

WebViewer HTML will run in trial mode until a license is provided. For more information on licensing, please visit our website.