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@scaryterry/pdfium

Introduction

@scaryterry/pdfium is a TypeScript PDF platform built on Google PDFium.

It serves two primary use cases:

  1. Core document API (@scaryterry/pdfium) for read/write/render/search workflows.
  2. React viewer toolkit (@scaryterry/pdfium/react) for shipping a full viewer UI quickly.

What You Get

Section titled “What You Get”
  • Typed PDF primitives and high-level document/page APIs.
  • Cross-runtime support for Node.js and browsers.
  • Worker-capable runtime model for off-main-thread processing.
  • Optional native Node backend for higher throughput.
  • React components/hooks for viewer composition (PDFiumProvider, PDFViewer, panels, toolbar).

Who Should Start Here

Section titled “Who Should Start Here”
  • You want to pick the correct API surface before writing code.
  • You need to understand WASM and worker setup rules up front.
  • You are deciding between direct core API usage and viewer composition.

Runtime Model (Important)

Section titled “Runtime Model (Important)”
  • Node.js core API: PDFium.init() works directly.
  • Browser core API: pass wasmUrl or wasmBinary.
  • React viewer: pass workerUrl and (wasmUrl or wasmBinary) to PDFiumProvider.

If you skip those browser/React inputs, initialization cannot complete.

Choose Your Path

Section titled “Choose Your Path”

Path A: Core API

Section titled “Path A: Core API”

Use this path when you want programmatic PDF workflows:

  • render pages to RGBA
  • extract/search text
  • inspect annotations/bookmarks/attachments
  • create and modify PDFs

Start here:

Path B: React Viewer Toolkit

Section titled “Path B: React Viewer Toolkit”

Use this path when you want a production viewer UI:

  • plug-and-play PDFViewer
  • customizable toolbar and side panels
  • headless hooks for custom layouts

Start here:

Minimal Examples

Section titled “Minimal Examples”

Core API

Section titled “Core API”
import { PDFium } from '@scaryterry/pdfium';


using pdfium = await PDFium.init();
using document = await pdfium.openDocument(pdfBytes);
using page = document.getPage(0);


const text = page.getText();
const image = page.render({ scale: 2 });
console.log(text.length, image.width, image.height);

React Viewer

Section titled “React Viewer”
import wasmUrl from '@scaryterry/pdfium/pdfium.wasm?url';
import { PDFiumProvider, PDFViewer } from '@scaryterry/pdfium/react';


const workerUrl = new URL('./pdfium.worker.ts', import.meta.url).toString();


function App() {
  return (
    <PDFiumProvider wasmUrl={wasmUrl} workerUrl={workerUrl} initialDocument={{ data: pdfBytes, name: 'sample.pdf' }}>
      <PDFViewer />
    </PDFiumProvider>
  );
}

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”