Display a PDF in WPF Application

Question

Any ideas how to display a PDF file in a WPF Windows Application?

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I am using the following code to run the browser but the Browser.Navigate method does not do anything!

WebBrowser browser = new WebBrowser();
browser.Navigate("http://www.google.com");
this.AddChild(browser); // this is the System.Windows.Window

Solution 1

Oops. this is for a winforms app. Not for WPF. I will post this anyway.

try this

private AxAcroPDFLib.AxAcroPDF axAcroPDF1;
this.axAcroPDF1 = new AxAcroPDFLib.AxAcroPDF();
this.axAcroPDF1.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;
this.axAcroPDF1.Enabled = true;
this.axAcroPDF1.Name = "axAcroPDF1";
this.axAcroPDF1.OcxState = ((System.Windows.Forms.AxHost.State)(resources.GetObject("axAcroPDF1.OcxState")));
axAcroPDF1.LoadFile(DownloadedFullFileName);
axAcroPDF1.Visible = true;

Solution 2

You could simply host a Web Browser control on the form and use it to open the PDF.

There's a new native WPF "WebBrowser" control in .NET 3.51, or you could host the Windows.Forms browser in your WPF app.

Solution 3

Try MoonPdfPanel - A WPF-based PDF viewer control http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/579878/MoonPdfPanel-A-WPF-based-PDF-viewer-control

GitHub: https://github.com/reliak/moonpdf

Solution 4

Just use a frame and a webbrowser like so

Frame frame = new Frame();
WebBrowserbrowser = new WebBrowser();
browser.Navigate(new Uri(filename));
frame.Content = browser;

Then when you don't need it anymore do this to clean it up:

WebBrowser browser = frame.Content as WebBrowser;
browser.Dispose();
frame.Content = null;

If you don't clean it up then you might have memory leak problems depending on the version of .NET your using. I saw bad memory leaks in .NET 3.5 if I didn't clean up.

Solution 5

Disclosure: Here is a commercial one and I work for this company.

I realize that an answer has already been accepted but the following does not require Adobe Reader/Acrobat and it is a WPF solution - as opposed to Winforms. I also realize this is an old question but it has just been updated so I guess it is still actual.

PDFRasterizer.NET 3.0 allows you to render to a WPF FixedDocument. It preserves all vector graphics (PDF graphics are converted to more or less equivalent WPF elements. This is probably closest to what you need.

using (FileStream file = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
  pdfDoc = new Document(file);

  ConvertToWpfOptions convertOptions = new ConvertToWpfOptions();
  RenderSettings renderSettings = new RenderSettings();
  ...

  FixedDocument wpfDoc = pdfDoc.ConvertToWpf(renderSettings, convertOptions, 0, 9, summary);
}

You can pass the wpfDoc to e.g. the WPF DocumentViewer to quickly implement a viewer.

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