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Customizing WebViewer UI Popups

The following features are available in:

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PDF.js Express Viewer

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PDF.js Express Viewer is a free viewer with limited capabilities compared to PDF.js Express Plus

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PDF.js Express Plus

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PDF.js Express Plus is a commercial PDF SDK for viewing, annotating, signing, form filling and more

The popups in WebViewer UI are small floating menus.

In WebViewer UI, there are 4 types of popups:

There are a number of ways you may want to customize Popups. To name a few:

The WebViewer UI provides APIS to easily handle each of these cases and more.

Get items

The unique identifier of the items in the popup can be retrieved using the getItems API.
It returns an array of objects where each object contains a key that denotes the dataElement.

Adding items

Adding items can be done using the add API.
The type of items to add can be found in the header item API.

Add new items at beginning of the popup

To add new items at beginning of the popup, do not provide a second parameter to the add function.

WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.add({
      type: 'actionButton',
      label: 'some-label',
      onClick: () => console.log('clicked'),
    });
  });

Add new items at a specific index of the popup

There are 2 ways to do this.

Option one:

  • provide a valid dataElement string as a second parameter. This will insert the new item(s) after the specified data element.

Option two:

  1. Get the list of data elements in the popup using the getItems API
  2. Call the add API and use the index from the list retrieved step 1 as the second parameter
WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    const contextMenuItems = instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.getItems();
    // insert the new item after the 6th element
    instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.add({
      type: 'actionButton',
      label: 'some-label',
      onClick: () => console.log('clicked'),
    },
    contextMenuItems[5].dataElement);
  });

Modifying items

Existing items can be modified using updateElements.
The items in the popup can be replaced using update.

Update existing elements' properties

WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    // Updating existing sticky tool button in context menu popup with new label and new on click handler
    instance.UI.updateElement(
      "stickyToolButton", 
      {
        label: 'new-label', 
        onClick: () => console.log('clicked')
      }
    );
  });

Replace existing elements

WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    // replace existing items with a new array of items
    instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.update([
      {
        type: 'actionButton',
        label: '1',
        onClick: () => console.log('clicked'),
      },
      {
        type: 'actionButton',
        label: '2',
        onClick: () => console.log('clicked'),
      },
    ]);
  });

Update ordering of elements in the popup

This can be done by:

  1. Get the list of data elements in the popup using the getItems API
  2. Modify ordering of the elements in the list retrieved from step 1.
  3. call update
WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    const contextMenuItems = instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.getItems();
    const newArray = contextMenuItems.reverse();
    instance.UI.contextMenuPopup.update(newArray);
  });

Deleting items

Items in the popup can be deleted using the using disableElements.

Adds a custom overlay to annotation on hover

WebViewer(...)
  .then(function(instance) {
    instance.UI.setAnnotationContentOverlayHandler(annotation => { 
      const div = document.createElement('div'); 
      div.appendChild(document.createTextNode(`Created by: ${annotation.Author}`)); 
      div.appendChild(document.createElement('br')); 
      div.appendChild(document.createTextNode(`Created on ${annotation.DateCreated}`)); 
      return div; 
    });
  });