[Solved] KendoReact PDFViewer does not render PDF content after upgrade to 14.4.1

[Vladislav]

Hello,

after upgrading KendoReact from version 10.x to 14.4.1, the PDFViewer stopped rendering the PDF document content.

We did not change the implementation. The PDF file is loaded from our server as a Base64 string and passed to the PDFViewer through the data prop.

Before the upgrade, the same Base64 value was rendered correctly. After the upgrade to 14.4.1, the PDFViewer toolbar is displayed, but the document content area is empty. The pager shows “Page 1 of 0”, and no PDF pages are rendered. Please see the attached screenshot.

Current behavior:

• PDFViewer toolbar is visible.

• Content area is blank.

• Pager shows “Page 1 of 0”.

• The same Base64 PDF data worked in the previous KendoReact version.

• No code changes were made except the KendoReact package upgrade.

Expected behavior:

• The PDF content should be rendered from the Base64 string as before.

Environment:

• @progress/kendo-react-pdf-viewer: 14.4.1

• KendoReact upgraded from: 10.x

• Data source: Base64 string returned from server

• Usage: <PDFViewer data={base64String} />

Could you please confirm whether there were any breaking changes or new dependency/version requirements for the PDFViewer between KendoReact 10.x and 14.4.1, especially related to Base64 data rendering, pdfjs-dist, @progress/kendo-pdfviewer-common, or theme versions?

Also, is the PDFViewer in 14.4.1 expected to work with a plain Base64 string passed to the data prop, or should the value be converted to ArrayBuffer/TypedArray instead?

Thank you.

[Vessy]

Hi, Vladislav,

Thank you for the detailed report. The behavior described is not expected, and there is no any intended breaking change in 14.4.1 that removes support for Base64 through the `data` prop.

From the 10.x to 14.4.1 comparison, the PDF loading path still supports Base64 and still uses the same PDF.js major line in that specific release. The `data` prop should still work with a valid Base64 PDF payload.

A possible thing that could break the rendering of the PdfViewer, though, could be if you are using a KendoTheme version which is not compatible with the updated version of KendoReact. For example, the compatible themes version for KendoReact 14.4.1 is ^13.1.1 - can you confirm that you are  using this version in your app?

• https://www.telerik.com/kendo-react-ui/components/changelogs/ui-for-react#v14.4.1 

If no, please, upgrade to it and let me know if the problem persists.

Regards,
Vessy
Progress Telerik