Hey everyone,
I’m working on an ASP.NET project using C# and I’m trying to figure out how to show different types of documents in my web app. I want users to view PDFs, Word docs, and Excel spreadsheets right in their browser in a read-only mode.
I’ve heard Google Docs could be a good solution for this, but I’m not quite sure how to set it up in my ASP.NET application. Has anyone tried this before? Any advice or sample code would be greatly appreciated!
I’m fairly new to this area, so a detailed, step-by-step guide would be very helpful. Thanks a lot for your support!
hey laura, i’ve used google docs viewer before. it’s pretty simple. just make sure ur docs are hosted somewhere public, then use this url format:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=YOUR_DOC_URL&embedded=true
Put that in an iframe and ur good to go. Just be careful about security n stuff!
I’ve actually tackled this issue in a recent project. While Google Docs viewer is a popular option, I found that using PDF.js for PDFs and Microsoft’s Office Online viewer for Word and Excel files worked better for my needs.
For PDFs, PDF.js is lightweight and easy to integrate. You can host it on your server and use it to render PDFs directly in the browser. It’s open-source and highly customizable.
For Office documents, Microsoft’s Office Online viewer is quite robust. You’ll need to register your app with Microsoft to get an API key, but once set up, it handles Word and Excel files seamlessly.
The integration process involves creating a viewer component in your ASP.NET application that determines the file type and loads the appropriate viewer. You’ll need to handle file storage and retrieval on your end, possibly using Azure Blob Storage or a similar service.
Remember to implement proper security measures to ensure only authorized users can access the documents. This approach gave me more control over the viewing experience and better performance than relying solely on Google Docs viewer.
I’ve implemented something similar in one of my projects. Google Docs viewer is indeed a solid choice for this task. Here’s a basic approach:
- Store your documents on a publicly accessible server.
- Generate a URL for the Google Docs viewer, including your document’s URL as a parameter.
- Embed this URL in an iframe on your web page.
The URL structure looks like this:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=YOUR_DOCUMENT_URL&embedded=true
In your ASP.NET code, you’d create this URL dynamically based on the document the user wants to view. Then, you can use an iframe to display it:
Remember to URL encode your document link. Also, be aware of potential security implications when exposing your documents publicly. You might want to implement some form of access control.