Getting Started with ASP.NET Core Standalone PDF Viewer control

24 Jun 20243 minutes to read

The ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer control is used to viewing and printing PDF files in any web application. It provides the best viewing experience available with core interactions such as zooming, scrolling, text searching, text selection, and text copying. Thumbnail, bookmark, hyperlink and table of contents support provides easy navigation within and outside the PDF files.

This section briefly explains about how to integrate ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer control in your ASP.NET Core application using Visual Studio.

Prerequisites

System requirements for ASP.NET Core controls

Integrate PDF Viewer into an ASP.NET Core application

  1. Start Visual Studio and select Create a new project.
  2. In the Create a new project dialog, select ASP.NET Core Web App.
    select-aspnet-core-web-app
  3. In the Configure your new project dialog, enter Project Name and select Next.
    Set-project-name
  4. In the Additional information dialog, select .NET 6.0 (Long-term Support) and then select Create.
    Set-framework

ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer NuGet package installation

To add ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer control, the following NuGet package need to be installed in your ASP.NET Core application.

Add Syncfusion ASP.NET Core Tag Helper

Open ~/Pages/_ViewImports.cshtml file and import the Syncfusion.EJ2 TagHelper.

@addTagHelper *, Syncfusion.EJ2

Add style sheet

The theme is referred using CDN inside the <head> of ~/Pages/Shared/_Layout.cshtml file as follows,

<head>
    ...
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET Core controls styles -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/27.2.2/fluent.css" />
</head>

NOTE

Checkout the Themes topic to learn different ways (CDN, NPM package, and CRG) to refer styles in ASP.NET Core application, and to have the expected appearance for Syncfusion ASP.NET Core controls.

Add script reference

Add the required scripts using CDN inside the <head> of ~/Pages/Shared/_Layout.cshtml file as follows,

<head>
    ...
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET Core controls scripts -->
    <script src="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/27.2.2/dist/ej2.min.js"></script>
</head>

NOTE

While referring the scripts from the downloaded resources in your application, make sure to place the ‘ej2-pdfviewer-lib’ assets in the same directory as the ‘ej2.min.js’ script.

Register Syncfusion Script Manager

Open ~/Pages/Shared/_Layout.cshtml page and register the script manager in the ASP.NET Core application as follows.

<body>
    ....
    ....
    <!-- Syncfusion ASP.NET Core Script Manager -->
    <ejs-scripts></ejs-scripts>
</body>

NOTE

Add the script manager <ejs-script> at the end of <body>.

Add ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer control

Add the Syncfusion ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer tag helper in ~/Pages/Index.cshtml page. You can load a PDF file in the PDF Viewer by specifying the document name in the documentPath property as below.

@page "{handler?}"
@model IndexModel
@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "Home page";
}

<div class="text-center">
    <ejs-pdfviewer id="pdfviewer" style="height:600px" documentPath="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/content/pdf/pdf-succinctly.pdf">
    </ejs-pdfviewer>
</div>

In the above code,

ejs-pdfviewer refers to the PDF Viewer control among the EJ components with id as “pdfviewer”.

documentPath is the property needed to load a PDF file in the PDF Viewer.

Press Ctrl+F5 (Windows) or ⌘+F5 (macOS) to run the app. Then, the Syncfusion ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer control will be rendered in the default web browser.

ASP.NET Core PDF Viewer Control

NOTE

View Sample in GitHub.

See also