The engine

@cloudpdf/engine is the cloud client for CloudPDF. It implements the same Engine interface as the local WASM engine that powers EmbedPDF, but instead of running PDFium in a Web Worker it routes every call over HTTPS to a @cloudpdf/server deployment (self-hosted or CloudPDF SaaS).

That means the same SDK code that drives a fully local viewer also drives a cloud-backed one — only the transport differs. You get document open, page rendering, text extraction, annotations, metadata, and security/access through a single, abortable, strongly-typed API.

These pages assume a reachable CloudPDF deployment — the managed SaaS or your own @cloudpdf/server — and every example talks to it over HTTPS.

What the engine gives you#

• One Engine contract — createCloudEngine(...) returns an object with a single open() method that resolves to a DocumentHandle.
• Document handles — a DocumentHandle exposes metadata, annotations, pages, security, and a page(pon) accessor for per-page work.
• Rendering — request a page as an encoded image (png/webp) or raw RGBA, at any scale or target rectangle.
• Text & geometry — extract a page’s plain text or geometry snapshot.
• Annotations — list, create, update, delete, and reorder annotations.
• Security & access — inspect encryption/permission state, unlock password-protected documents, and read the caller’s effective scope.
• Abortable everything — every async call returns an AbortablePromise you can cancel, with typed EngineErrors on failure.

How it fits together#

import { createCloudEngine } from '@cloudpdf/engine';
 
const engine = createCloudEngine({
  baseUrl: 'https://pdf.your-app.com',
  token: () => getDocToken(), // doc-scoped JWT from your backend
});
 
const doc = await engine.open({ kind: 'token', token: () => getDocToken() });
const page = doc.page(/* pageObjectNumber */ 4);
const image = await page.render.image({ viewport: { kind: 'width', width: 1200 } });
 
const { url, revoke } = await image.objectUrl();
// …draw `url` into an <img>, then revoke() when done.
 
await doc.close();
await engine.destroy();

Your backend mints the short-lived, document-scoped JWT; the browser never sees storage credentials or your tenant secret.

Next steps#