@hyzyla/pdfium

📃 Documentation

TypeScript/JavaScript wrapper for the PDFium library:

• ⬇️ pdfium - source code of the PDFium library, developed by Google and used in Chrome.
• ⬇️ pdfium-lib - project to compile PDFium library to multiple platforms, including WebAssembly.
• 📍 @hyzyla/pdfium - (you are here) TypeScript/JavaScript wrapper for the WebAssembly build of PDFium library.

Features

• 📦 Zero dependencies - PDFium library is compiled to WebAssembly and bundled with the package.
• 🚀 Fast - PDFium can be faster than PDF.js, because it's originally written in C++ and compiled to WebAssembly, while PDF.js is entirely written in JavaScript.
• 🔒 Type-safe - TypeScript definitions are included.
• 🗼 Works in browser and Node.js

Supported environments

• Node.js 22 or newer, tested on 22, 24 and 26.
• Chrome and Edge 85+, Firefox 79+ and Safari 15+. The tests run in Chrome, Firefox and WebKit, with the package bundled by Vite, bundled by webpack, and loaded without a bundler.
• @hyzyla/pdfium/worker starts a module worker, which Firefox supports from version 114.

In older browsers the library throws an error when it loads, because PDFium's WebAssembly build checks the browser version. On older Node.js versions, npm warns when you install the package.

Installation

# yarn add @hyzyla/pdfium
# pnpm install @hyzyla/pdfium
npm install @hyzyla/pdfium

Usage

import { promises as fs } from "fs";

import { PDFiumLibrary, type PDFiumPageRenderOptions } from "@hyzyla/pdfium";
import sharp from "sharp";

/**
 * For this and the following examples, we will use "sharp" library to convert
 * the raw bitmap data to PNG images. You can use any other library or write
 * your own function to convert the raw bitmap data to PNG images.
 */
async function renderFunction(options: PDFiumPageRenderOptions) {
  return await sharp(options.data, {
    raw: {
      width: options.width,
      height: options.height,
      channels: 4,
    },
  })
    .png()
    .toBuffer();
}

async function main() {
  const buff = await fs.readFile("test2.pdf");

  // Initialize the library, you can do this once for the whole application
  // and reuse the library instance.
  const library = await PDFiumLibrary.init();

  // Load the document from the buffer
  // You can also pass "password" as the second argument if the document is encrypted.
  const document = await library.loadDocument(buff);

  // Iterate over the pages, render them to PNG images and
  // save to the output folder
  for (const page of document.pages()) {
    console.log(`${page.number} - rendering...`);

    // Render PDF page to PNG image
    const image = await page.render({
      scale: 3, // 3x scale (72 DPI is the default)
      render: renderFunction, // sharp function to convert raw bitmap data to PNG
    });

    // Save the PNG image to the output folder
    await fs.writeFile(`output/${page.number}.png`, Buffer.from(image.data));

    // Free the page before moving on to the next one
    page.close();
  }

  // Do not forget to destroy the document and the library
  // when you are done.
  document.destroy();
  library.destroy();
}

main();

Release

1. Bump version in package.json: npm version patch
2. Create a new release in GitHub
3. Check status of the GitHub Actions