Open a PDF from local storage in MAUI

Nutrient MAUI SDK supports opening a document from a number of sources, including local storage.

Introduction

To open a document, you need to add PDFView to your desired XAML. You’ll also need to assign a Name for interacting with it through code. In this example, PDFView is named PDFView:

<pspdfkit:PDFView x:Name="PDFView" Initialized="OnPDFViewInitialized"
                  License="{OnPlatform
                    Android={StaticResource AndroidLicenseKey},
                    iOS={StaticResource iOSLicenseKey},
                    MacCatalyst={StaticResource MacCatalystLicenseKey},
                    WinUI={StaticResource WindowsLicenseKey}}" />

The rest of the document opening process needs to be done after the PDFView control(opens in a new tab) is loaded. The easiest way to ensure it’s loaded is by using the PDFView.Initialized event as shown above. Alternatively, you can subscribe to it in code-behind as follows:

PDFView.Initialized += (sender, e) =>
{
    // ...
};

If you don’t intend to open a document straight away and you know that PDFView will always be initialized, you can skip this step and open the document whenever it’s convenient.

Opening a document from local storage

There are two ways to invoke a file picker to let the user select a document to open.

Invoked by Nutrient MAUI SDK

To invoke the file picker from Nutrient MAUI SDK, first open a document from the app assets folder to initialize the SDK. This can be a document like the one in our Catalog app, blank.pdf(opens in a new tab). The following example code demonstrates how to show the file picker to let the user select a document to open:

try
{
    var document = await PSPDFKitController.LoadDocumentFromAssetsAsync(
        "blank.pdf",
        PSPDFKitController.CreateViewerConfiguration());
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    // Handle exception.
}

Once the document is loaded in the Nutrient MAUI SDK, users can use the file picker button on the toolbar and select a document to open.

Invoked by code outside the Nutrient MAUI SDK environment

Note that there’s a platform-specific setup required for FilePicker. It’s worth reading about the setup here(opens in a new tab) if you’re not familiar with it.

The following example code demonstrates how to show the file picker to let the user select a document to open:

FileResult result = null;

// Ensure that the file picker is shown on the UI thread.
await Application.Current!.Dispatcher.DispatchAsync(
    async () =>
    {
        result = await FilePicker.Default.PickAsync();
    });

if (result == null)
{
    return;
}

try
{
    var document = await PSPDFKitController.LoadDocumentAsync(result.FullPath,
        PSPDFKitController.CreateViewerConfiguration());
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    // Handle exception.
}