Getting Started with .NET MAUI PDF Viewer (SfPdfViewer)

13 Sep 20236 minutes to read

This section walks you through the process of viewing or displaying a PDF document in a.NET MAUI application using the SfPdfViewer control.

To get started quickly with .NET MAUI SfPdfViewer, you can check on this video:

Creating an application using the .NET MAUI PDF Viewer

Step 1: Create a new .NET MAUI application in Visual Studio.

Step 2: Add the Syncfusion.Maui.PdfViewer nuget package reference to your project from nuget.org.

Step 3: In the MauiProgram.cs file, register the Syncfusion core handler.

using Syncfusion.Maui.Core.Hosting;

namespace PdfViewerExample
{
    public class MauiProgram 
    {
        public static MauiApp CreateMauiApp()
        {
            var builder = MauiApp.CreateBuilder();
            builder
                .UseMauiApp<App>()
                .ConfigureFonts(fonts =>
                {
                    fonts.AddFont("OpenSans-Regular.ttf", "OpenSansRegular");
                });

           builder.ConfigureSyncfusionCore();
           return builder.Build();
        }
    }
}

Step 4: Add a new folder to the project named Assets and add the PDF document you need to display in the PDF viewer; here, a PDF file named “PDF_Succinctly.pdf” has been used.

NOTE

You can also load files from local storage or URLs.

Step 5: In this example, we will be following the MVVM binding. So, create a new view model class named PdfViewerViewModel.cs and add the below code snippet to it.

using System.Reflection;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace PdfViewerExample
{
    class PdfViewerViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        private Stream? m_pdfDocumentStream;

        /// <summary>
        /// An event to detect the change in the value of a property.
        /// </summary>
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler? PropertyChanged;

        /// <summary>
        /// The PDF document stream that is loaded into the instance of the PDF viewer. 
        /// </summary>
        public Stream PdfDocumentStream
        {
            get
            {
                return m_pdfDocumentStream;
            }
            set
            {
                m_pdfDocumentStream = value;
                OnPropertyChanged("PdfDocumentStream");
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Constructor of the view model class
        /// </summary>
        public PdfViewerViewModel()
        {
            //Accessing the PDF document that is added as embedded resource as stream.
            m_pdfDocumentStream = typeof(App).GetTypeInfo().Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("PdfViewerExample.Assets.PDF_Succinctly.pdf");
        }

        public void OnPropertyChanged(string name)
        {
            PropertyChanged?.Invoke(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
        } 
    }
}

Step 6: In the MainPage.xaml, import the control namespace Syncfusion.Maui.PdfViewer, and then initialize the SfPdfViewer control and bind the PdfDocumentStream created to the DocumentSource` property. The following code snippet explains the same.

NOTE

DocumentSource property supports both Stream and byte[] objects.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentPage xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dotnet/2021/maui"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
             xmlns:syncfusion="clr-namespace:Syncfusion.Maui.PdfViewer;assembly=Syncfusion.Maui.PdfViewer"
             xmlns:local="clr-namespace:PdfViewerExample"
             x:Class="PdfViewerExample.MainPage">

    <ContentPage.BindingContext>
        <local:PdfViewerViewModel x:Name="viewModel" />
    </ContentPage.BindingContext>

    <ContentPage.Content>
        <syncfusion:SfPdfViewer x:Name="PdfViewer"
                               DocumentSource="{Binding PdfDocumentStream}">
        </syncfusion:SfPdfViewer>
    </ContentPage.Content>
</ContentPage>

NOTE

  1. While changing or opening different documents on the same page, the previously loaded document will be unloaded automatically by the SfPdfViewer.
  2. And, if you are using multiple pages in your application, then make sure to unload the document from the SfPdfViewer while leaving the page that has it to release the memory and resources consumed by the PDF document that is loaded. The unloading of documents can be done by calling the UnloadDocument method.

Step 7: Finally, run the application to obtain the following output.

Getting started with .NET MAUI PDF Viewer

The Getting Started example project for the.NET MAUI PDF Viewer can be downloaded here. 

NOTE

You can refer to our .NET MAUI PDF Viewer feature tour page for its groundbreaking feature representations. You can also explore our .NET MAUI PDF Viewer Example that shows you how to render the PDF Viewer in .NET MAUI.