React PDF viewer using react-pdf

This article was first published in September 2021 and was updated in November 2024.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to build a React.js PDF viewer using the react-pdf library. react-pdf is a widely used open source library designed specifically for rendering PDF files in React applications. This library leverages the power of PDF.js, a popular open source project by Mozilla, to parse and render PDF documents in the browser.

In the first part of this blog post, you’ll look at how to create the PDF viewer with react-pdf, and in the second part, you’ll be able to follow along with a guide on how to integrate the Nutrient React.js PDF viewer library into a React.js project.

Open source React.js PDF viewer libraries

There are a couple of open source React PDF viewer libraries. One of the most popular is the @react-pdf/renderer library, with 510K weekly downloads on npm. It’s used for creating PDF files in the browser, on the server, or on mobile devices. If you want to work with this library, please refer to our How to Create a PDF with React.js blog post.

Another popular library is react-pdf by Wojciech Maj, with around 950K weekly downloads on npm. It’s used to display existing PDFs. This library will be used in this blog for the purpose of creating a PDF viewer.

The information about react-pdf is mostly correct and captures the main features of the library well. However, there are a few clarifications to ensure accuracy:

1. Components (Document and Page): The Document component is indeed used for loading PDF files, and Page components represent individual pages of the PDF. For best practices, it is indeed recommended to define configuration options outside of the component (such as using useMemo) to optimize performance, especially when re-renders occur.

2. Lack of Built-in UI as a Feature: This is accurate. react-pdf does not include a built-in UI, allowing developers to create custom controls and integrate them with the library’s functionality to match their design needs.

3. Compatibility with React’s Ecosystem: This statement is accurate. Being a React-specific library, react-pdf is built to integrate well with React’s hooks, context, and other features, providing a seamless experience.

4. Community Support: Mentioning the library’s popularity is valid. It is well-supported, with an active community and documentation, which provides a good level of support and resources.

Why Choose react-pdf?

react-pdf is an excellent choice for developers who want to integrate PDF viewing functionality into their React applications. Here are some key benefits:

• Ease of Integration: react-pdf offers a simple and straightforward API, making it easy to add PDF viewing capabilities to existing React projects. You can quickly display PDFs with minimal setup.

• Flexibility: The library provides components like Document and Page, enabling developers to create custom PDF viewers. The Document component is essential for loading PDF files, and for optimized performance, it is recommended to define any configuration options outside the React component, using hooks like useMemo.

• Customization: While react-pdf doesn’t include a built-in UI, this flexibility allows you to create a user interface tailored to your application’s design. You can add navigation controls, zoom functionality, and other features using standard React components.

• Compatibility: As a pure React library, react-pdf is fully compatible with the React ecosystem. Whether you’re using hooks, context, or other React features, react-pdf integrates seamlessly.

• Community Support: With around 950K weekly downloads on npm, react-pdf has a large and active community. This means you can find ample resources, examples, and support from other developers who use the library.

Requirements to get started

To get started, you’ll need:

• Node.js version 14 or later.

• A package manager compatible with npm. This guide contains usage examples for Yarn and the npm client (installed with Node.js by default). Make sure the npm version is 5.6 or greater.

Building a React.js PDF viewer with react-pdf

Start by creating a React.js project with vite:

npm create vite@latest react-pdf-demo -- --template react

After the project is created, change the directory into the project folder:

cd react-pdf-demo

Adding react-pdf

1. Now, you can install the npm package for the react-pdf library from the terminal:

npm install react-pdf

2. Place the file you want to render inside the public directory of the react-pdf-example project. You can use our demo document as an example; you just need to rename it to document.pdf.

Displaying a PDF

1. react-pdf comes with two components: Document and Page. Document is used to open a PDF and is mandatory. Within the document, you can mount pages, which are used to render the PDF page. To integrate this into your example project, open src/App.jsx and replace its contents with the following:

import { useState } from 'react';
import { Document, Page } from 'react-pdf';

// Text layer for React-PDF.
import 'react-pdf/dist/Page/TextLayer.css';

const App = () => {
	const [numPages, setNumPages] = useState(null);
	const [pageNumber, setPageNumber] = useState(1);

	const onDocumentLoadSuccess = ({ numPages }) => {
		setNumPages(numPages);
	};

	const goToPrevPage = () =>
		setPageNumber(pageNumber - 1 <= 1 ? 1 : pageNumber - 1);

	const goToNextPage = () =>
		setPageNumber(
			pageNumber + 1 >= numPages ? numPages : pageNumber + 1,
		);

	return (
		<div>
			<nav>
				<button onClick={goToPrevPage}>Prev</button>
				<button onClick={goToNextPage}>Next</button>
				<p>
					Page {pageNumber} of {numPages}
				</p>
			</nav>

			<Document
				file="pspdfkit-web-demo.pdf"
				onLoadSuccess={onDocumentLoadSuccess}
			>
				<Page pageNumber={pageNumber} />
			</Document>
		</div>
	);
};

export default App;

For react-pdf to work, a PDF.js worker needs to be provided. You can do this in a couple of ways. For most cases, importing the worker will work as was done in the src/App.jsx file:

import { pdfjs } from 'react-pdf';

pdfjs.GlobalWorkerOptions.workerSrc = new URL(
	'pdfjs-dist/build/pdf.worker.min.mjs',
	import.meta.url,
).toString();
// Rest of code.

You can read more about how to configure a PDF.js worker in your project here.

2. Now, start the application by running the following:

npm run dev

One of the disadvantages of using react-pdf is that it doesn’t come with a UI. In this example, you’ve rendered two buttons to navigate between pages and showed the total number of pages.

You can access the full code on GitHub.

Limitations of react-pdf

Overall, react-pdf is a great open source project, but it has some disadvantages:

• It doesn’t come with a user interface out of the box. If you need a UI to help users navigate through a PDF, you’ll need to build it from scratch.
• Text selection doesn’t work properly. If you try to select text in a PDF, you’ll see that it’s not a good user experience.
• Rendering large PDF files or documents with many pages can sometimes impact performance, particularly in resource-constrained environments.

Building a React.js PDF viewer with Nutrient

We offer a commercial React.js PDF library that can easily be integrated into your web application. It comes with 30+ features that let you view, annotate, edit, and sign documents directly in your browser. Out of the box, it has a polished and flexible UI that you can extend or simplify based on your unique use case.

• A prebuilt and polished UI
• 15+ annotation tools
• Support for multiple file types
• Dedicated support from engineers

Creating a new React project

1. Use vite to scaffold out a simple React application:

npm create vite@latest pspdfkit-react-example -- --template react

2. Change to the created project directory:

cd pspdfkit-react-example

Adding Nutrient to your project

1. Now, add Nutrient Web SDK as a dependency:

npm install pspdfkit

2. As you’re using the WebAssembly build of Nutrient Web SDK, the final setup step is to copy files the browser will need from the npm module:

cp -R ./node_modules/pspdfkit/dist/pspdfkit-lib public/pspdfkit-lib

The code above will copy the pspdfkit-lib directory from within node_modules/ into the public/ directory to make it available to the SDK at runtime.

3. Make sure your public directory contains a pspdfkit-lib directory with the Nutrient library assets.

Displaying a PDF

1. Add the PDF document you want to display to the public directory. You can use our demo document as an example.

2. Add a component wrapper for the Nutrient library and save it as src/components/ViewerComponent.jsx:

import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';

export default function ViewerComponent(props) {
	const containerRef = useRef(null);

	useEffect(() => {
		const container = containerRef.current;
		let PSPDFKit;

		(async function () {
			PSPDFKit = await import('pspdfkit');
			PSPDFKit.unload(container);

			await PSPDFKit.load({
				// Container where PSPDFKit should be mounted.
				container,
				// Use dark theme.
				theme: PSPDFKit.Theme.DARK,
				// The document to open.
				document: props.document,
				// Use the public directory URL as a base URL. PSPDFKit will download its library assets from here.
				baseUrl: `${window.location.protocol}//${
					window.location.host
				}/${import.meta.env.BASE_URL}`,
			});
		})();

		return () => PSPDFKit && PSPDFKit.unload(container);
	}, [props.document]);

	return (
		<div
			ref={containerRef}
			style={{ width: '100%', height: '100vh' }}
		/>
	);
}

To load Nutrient Web SDK into the ViewerComponent, use PSPDFKit.load when the component has mounted.

3. Now, all that’s left is to render the ViewerComponent in App.jsx by loading the PDF you downloaded earlier:

import ViewerComponent from './components/ViewerComponent';

function App() {
	return (
		<div className="App" style={{ width: '100vw' }}>
			<div className="App-viewer">
				<ViewerComponent document={'document.pdf'} />
			</div>
		</div>
	);
}

export default App;

4. You can also open a different PDF file by adding a button and adding a handler to the onClick event:

// App.jsx
import { useState } from 'react';

import ViewerComponent from './components/ViewerComponent';

function App() {
	const [document, setDocument] = useState('document.pdf');

	const handleOpen = () => setDocument('another-example.pdf');

	return (
		<div className="App" style={{ width: '100vw' }}>
			<button className="App-button" onClick={handleOpen}>
				Open another document
			</button>
			<div className="App-viewer">
				<ViewerComponent document={document} />
			</div>
		</div>
	);
}

export default App;

You can use this example document as a second example. Rename it to another-example.pdf, and then add it to the /public folder.

When you click Open another document, it loads the another-example.pdf file.

5. Your project structure will now look like this:

pspdfkit-react-example
├── public
│   ├── pspdfkit-lib
│   └── document.pdf
│   └── another-example.pdf
├── src
│   ├── components
│   |   └── ViewerComponent.jsx
|   └── App.js
└── package.json

6. Start the app and run it in your default browser:

npm run dev

You’ll now see your PDF rendered in the container element. Try using the toolbar to navigate through, annotate, and search in the document. Note that because Nutrient is a commercial product, you’ll see a Nutrient Web SDK evaluation notice on the document. To get a license key, contact Sales.

You can find the finished code on GitHub.

If you hit any snags, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support team for help.

Adding even more capabilities

Once you’ve deployed your viewer, you can start customizing it to meet your specific requirements or easily add more capabilities. To help you get started, here are some of our most popular React.js guides:

• Adding annotations
• Editing documents
• Filling PDF forms
• Adding signatures to documents
• Real-time collaboration
• Redaction
• UI customization

Conclusion

In this post, you first saw how to build a React.js PDF viewer with the react-pdf library. In the second half, you walked through how to deploy the Nutrient React.js PDF viewer.

You can also deploy our vanilla JavaScript PDF viewer or use one of our many web framework deployment options like Vue.js, Angular, and jQuery. To see a list of all web frameworks, start your free trial. Or, launch our demo to see our viewer in action.

FAQ

Here are a few frequently asked questions about building a PDF viewer in React.js.

npm install @react-pdf-viewer/react-pdf