Slideshow for PDFs question

kochb1988 · Feb 13, 2025, 5:02 PM

Hello. Trying to see if there’s a module that can show PDFs instead of pics. I know that there is the screen rotation module. Is there a document / pdf show and/or PDF slideshow in the modules. If so, what is the name so that I can research it? Thank you in advance.

sdetweil · Feb 13, 2025, 5:23 PM

@kochb1988 i have not seen a module that says it does this.
did u look thru the third party modules? (list linked in the top menu above)

kochb1988

@sdetweil I have not seen a real good example of what I believe is needed. I’m looking at it 2 ways at once just in case. 1: A rotating MM screen (module exists) between a calendar and a pdf viewer (don’t believe it exists. 2: The ability to control the rotation of the screen. Such as: Always showing the calendar. But, when time for a presentation, the user can click something on-screen (with kb/mouse attached) that would switch the screen to the PDF and maaayyyyybe have the ability to control the PDF slide show.

sdetweil

@kochb1988 mmm-pages can do this

using the hidden page config for pdf module

but you need the pdf module

sdetweil

@kochb1988 here is a lib someone could use to create a module

https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdfjs-dist

the module would need to create a canvas element for the
library to draw in. not hard
use the getscripts: method to load the lib for browser access

chrisfr1976

@sdetweil

Challenge accepted :)

MMM-PDFSlideshow

I had some time today so I sat down and created something. Maybe useful. I’ll upload some Asterix-pdf to my mirror.

I’m happy with this status. If anyone needs modifications create a pull request. I’m not happy with the fullscreen behavior since the scaling does not work as expected (fullscreen always uses the full width, so a full page display is not nice in landscape orientation). But I do not really need this.

sdetweil

@chrisfr1976 cool. why fullscreen or if set to fullscreen position?

can be sized w css

chrisfr1976

@sdetweil Hi, this is the rest of my tries to show the page in 100% in fullscreen mode. So if position is set to a fullscreen region then also the fullscreen flag must be activated.

sdetweil

@chrisfr1976 cool, should be possible to control in fullscreen w css.

in car, does this support url to pdf, or just local file?
(just local file)

chrisfr1976

@sdetweil
Hi,
now also hosted PDF-files are supported. PDF with url have now the lead. The local pdfs/ folder is the fall-back if no URL is set or in case of any errors.

But:
Most remote PDF is being blocked due to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing restrictions. The server hosting the PDF (https://www.w3.org/… etc.) is not allowing MagicMirror to access its resource. So the server-side PDF is downloaded locally and saved in a folder. Once the file exists locally, the download isn’t performed again. So if the server pdf is updated then the local download must be deleted.

If a URL-PDF (or one single PDF) should be displayed change displayTime: 10000, to a higher value (avoid flickering)
If a downloaded and local pdf should be displayed then copy or move the pdf from the pdfURL to pdfs folder and leave the URL in the config blank.

I think there are some optimizations in file handling possible and maybe a new PDF-URL can be sent with MMM-Remote module. But I won’t work on that any further. I will use the local folder in general (if I use the module at all - don’t know).