Display PDF document from WPF/Desktop app on Windows 10

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Hi!

There are many PDF libraries out there for displaying PDF documents (some very expensive, personally I prefer Xfinium), but Windows 10 and .NET have built in classes for this. You can't do much except display a bitmap of the pages but this is often all you need. Here's how to do it from a WPF app.

// Call UWP APIs from
// https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lucian/2015/10/23/how-to-call-uwp-apis-from-a-desktop-vbc-app (NuGet UWPDesktop)

// AsRandomAccessStream from
// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7669311/is-there-a-way-to-convert-a-system-io-stream-to-a-windows-storage-streams-irando

private async void MainWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
using (var stream = File.OpenRead(@"x.pdf"))

{
var doc = await PdfDocument.LoadFromStreamAsync(stream.AsRandomAccessStream());
var page = doc.GetPage(0);
using (var mem = new MemoryStream())
{
await page.RenderToStreamAsync(mem.AsRandomAccessStream());
var bitmap = BitmapFrame.Create(mem, BitmapCreateOptions.IgnoreImageCache, BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad);
image.Source = bitmap;
}
}
}

Enjoy!
Paul Tallett, UX Global Practice, Microsoft UK

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