Edit *existing* PDF in a browser

Question

I have a web application that is currently getting a base64 representation of a PDF from the server. I\'m able to use Mozilla\'s pdf.js to display this on a

Answer 1

Because other SO questions are being directed here, and considering how fast web technology advances (e.g. WASM), I am providing the following answer. Though PDFNetJS was able to do all this when the question was originally asked.

Since the requirement of "edit" was clarified to be "Basically what is needed is for users to open up a previously uploaded PDF, highlight or circle sections, and then save those annotations to the PDF back on the server." and "No text editing or manipulation of the document contant needs to happen.", then yes this is possible completely in any modern browser on any modern device.

PDFTron PDFNet SDK can do all this. A full fledged, out of the box document viewer is provided, with full annotation support. It is also possible to actually edit the PDF (change/replace text, redact, extract/add/replace images, and more). Not only are PDF files supported directly client side, but so are DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PNG and JPG. Files can be loaded locally or remotely, and there is no need for slow base64 encoding/decoding.

Demo: http://www.pdftron.com/webviewer

Samples: http://www.pdftron.com/documentation/web/samples/universal-samples

The original question was also for support for Siebel and "PDFNetJS tries to retrieve a .mem file, which is some binary data. This cannot be served by the application I'm using (Siebel) so it doesn't look like this is an option.".

The .mem file is for PNaCl which is Chrome only, and this can be disabled. PDFTron for Web supports WASM and even emscripten, one of which, if not both, should then be compatible with Siebel.