Installation:

npm install launchmenu-preview

Usage:

Mainly this library is useful for those making electron applications, as it allows you to render microsoft office files and PDFs to the electron BrowserWindow with ease.

Note:

In order to render Microsoft Office files you must have Microsoft Office installed, as it uses an interop binary in the process.

View a PDF:

lmp = require('launchmenu-preview')

//Get renderable pages of "C:\\Test.pdf". 
lmp.pdfPreview("C:\\Test.pdf",function(errors,pages){
	if(errors){
		console.error(errors);
		return
	} else {
		var myCanvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas')
		
		//render page to canvas
		pages[0].render(myCanvas)
		
		//Do more stuff with pages
		
		return
	}
});

View a Microsoft Office Document:

lmp = require('launchmenu-preview')

//get renderable pages of microsoft office file "C:\\TestToPDF.pptx", use temporary folder "C:\\temp".
lmp.msoPreview("C:\\TestToPDF.pptx","C:\\temp",function(errors,pages){
	if(errors){
		console.error(errors);
		return
	} else {
		var myCanvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas')
		
		//render page to canvas
		pages[0].render(myCanvas)
		
		//Do more stuff with pages
		
		return
	}
});

Note:

Powerpoint renders each slide as a page. Similarly Word renders each page as a page. Excel files are rendered such that each sheet is 1 page. This might lead to some issues with scale.

If scale is an issue an alternative scaling can be used:

page.render(myCanvas,{scale: 2})

Credits

This module wraps the functionality of 2 other node_modules:

• mso-pdf created by sancarn
• PDF.JS written by Mozilla.