Embedded PDF - open page number without reloading the document

Question

I have embedded a PDF document using the html object tag, and displayed it on one section of the webpage. Another section contains a tree-view of links (looks like the PDF's bookmarks). Clicking on a link in the tree-view reloads the PDF document and opens it on the correct page (page number is contained in the links). Is there a way to accomplish this without reloading the document?

To rephrase the question, I am looking for a JavaScript function that could imitate the behavior of the bookmarks - jumping to the page number without reloading the document.

Answer 1

I think there is no native method in JavaScript that would provide that functionality. You are going to need a library.

The easiest way would be to use a well documented library to work with pdf documents in JavaScript. PDF.js is a very good project in that sense, although it renders the pdf itself, instead of using Acrobat Reader, which might give problems with complicated documents.

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Another solution, using Adobe Acrobat reader, would be to use their own JavaScript API, following that link you will see the complete API reference. Quoting from that document (Page 254):

pageNum

Gets or sets the current page of the document. When setting pageNum to a specific page, remember that the values are 0-based. [...]

So if you wanted to go to a specific page of the document you could use

this.pageNum = 6;

Where this should be the app context. Here you can find the online API reference with more documentation and examples.

Some guides on using the above JS API:

• http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfdevjunkie/web_designers_guide
• http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_Passing_information_actions_from_the_browser_to_an-18885.html
• http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/pdf_open_parameters_v9.pdf#page=5