pdf-annotate.js

Annotation layer for PDF.js.

Combined fork of archived instructure/pdf-annotate.js and deleted DynamicEnvironmentSystems/pdf-annotate.js. And forked from Submitty's development branch.

This modified pdf-annotate.js fixes a lot of bugs in Submitty's branch, and adds some features (such as undo/redo) that we need in Papera -- a software-enginnering class project.

I cannot promise to continue maintaining this after class ends, but it's welcome to create issue/pr if you find something wrong. pdf-annotate.js is buggy and broken compared with commerical and expensive PDF javascript libraries, but it is the best open-source PDF annotation javascript library working with PDF.js you can find on the web (especially the version maintained here, at least in 2020 it is).

Objectives

• Provide a low level annotation layer for PDF.js.
• Optional high level UI for managing annotations.
• Agnostic of backend, just supply your own StoreAdapter to fetch/store data.
• Prescribe annotation format.

Example

import pdfjsLib from 'pdfjs-dist/build/pdf';
import PDFJSAnnotate from 'pdfjs-annotate';

const { UI } = PDFJSAnnotate;
const VIEWER = document.getElementById('viewer');
const RENDER_OPTIONS = {
  documentId: 'MyPDF.pdf',
  pdfDocument: null,
  scale: 1,
  rotate: 0
};

pdfjsLib.workerSrc = 'pdf.worker.js';
PDFJSAnnotate.setStoreAdapter(PDFJSAnnotate.LocalStoreAdapter);

pdfjsLib.getDocument(RENDER_OPTIONS.documentId).promise.then((pdf) => {
  RENDER_OPTIONS.pdfDocument = pdf;
  VIEWER.appendChild(UI.createPage(1));
  UI.renderPage(1, RENDER_OPTIONS);
});

See /web for an example web client for annotating PDFs.

Documentation

View the docs.

Developing

Although pdf-annotate.js has no features relying on specific operating system, it can only be built in Unix-like systems now.

# clone the repo
$ git clone https://github.com/taoky/pdf-annotate.js.git
$ cd pdf-annotate.js

# intall dependencies
$ npm install

# start example server
$ npm start
$ open http://127.0.0.1:8080

# run tests
$ npm test

# lint the code
$ npm run lint