betto_pdfium_ios

Releases

1. ▸▾0.1.024 Aug 2026

   The first stable release of betto_pdfium and its iOS companion plugin betto_pdfium_ios .

   The first stable release of betto_pdfium and its iOS companion plugin
   betto_pdfium_ios.

   betto_pdfium is a pure Dart wrapper around
   PDFium via dart:ffi. There is no
   dependency on dart:ui or Flutter, so it works in CLI tools, server-side Dart,
   and Flutter apps alike. Pre-built PDFium binaries
   (bblanchon/pdfium-binaries
   chromium/7906) are downloaded automatically by the native-assets build hook on
   first use — no C++ toolchain required.

   There are no functional changes since 0.1.0-dev.4; this release promotes the
   dev channel to a stable version. The notes below summarise everything that
   landed across 0.1.0-dev.1 → 0.1.0.

   Installation

   dependencies:
     betto_pdfium: ^0.1.0

   Flutter iOS apps also need the companion plugin, which delivers the PDFium
   xcframework via Swift Package Manager:

   dependencies:
     betto_pdfium: ^0.1.0
     betto_pdfium_ios: ^0.1.0

   Platform support

   All eight targets are supported:

   Platform	Status
   macOS arm64	Supported
   Linux x86_64	Supported
   Linux arm64	Supported
   Windows x86_64	Supported
   iOS arm64	Supported (xcframework)
   Android arm64	Supported
   Android x86_64	Supported
   Web (WASM)	Supported

   On desktop the binary is fetched automatically on the first dart test or
   dart run. On iOS the xcframework arrives through SPM during flutter pub get.
   Web requires make fetch_wasm_assets to stage the WASM/JS artifacts — see the
   package README.

   API surface

   Everything hangs off PdfDocument:

   • Document loading — PdfDocument.fromBytes() loads into a background
     isolate so the calling isolate is never blocked. PdfExtractionException
     distinguishes PdfError.passwordRequired from PdfError.invalidDocument.
     close() releases the native handle and is safe to call more than once.
   • Metadata — getMetadata() (title, author, subject, keywords, creator,
     producer, creation/modification dates), getDocumentInfo() (file version,
     permanent/changing IDs), and pageCount.
   • Text extraction — extractPlainText() streams PdfPageText per page with
     hasTextLayer and hasUnicodeErrors flags; isPlainTextExtractable() gives
     a quick scanned-document check.
   • Rendering — renderPageToBytes() produces a raw BGRA pixel buffer, with
     optional annotation rendering, LCD text, and background colour.
     getPageSize() returns dimensions in points plus sizeForDpi().
   • Annotations — extractAnnotations() streams typed annotations: text,
     markup (highlight/underline/squiggly/strikeout, with quadPoints), free text,
     ink, shape, popup, and stamp.
   • Images — extractImages() streams image objects with bounding boxes and
     metadata, optionally with bitmaps; renderImage() fetches a single image's
     BGRA bitmap on demand.
   • Search — search() streams matches with page index, character index, and
     rects in PDF user space; supports case, whole-word, and consecutive flags.
   • Table of contents — tableOfContents returns the full nested bookmark
     tree.
   • Thumbnails — getThumbnail() returns the embedded /Thumb stream when
     present, or a rendered fallback at a requested maximum dimension.
   • pdfinfo CLI — dart run bin/pdfinfo.dart inspects metadata, document
     info, page count, table of contents, and text extractability.

   Streams are fully cancellable — cancelling or calling close() stops processing
   immediately with no native handle leaks.

   Architecture notes

   • PDFium is not thread-safe, so all calls run on a single process-wide isolate
     (PdfiumIsolate), lazily spawned and shared by every PdfDocument.
   • On web, dart:isolate is unavailable, so the same concurrency model is
     implemented with a dedicated Web Worker and a postMessage protocol. Large
     document operations do not block the browser main thread.
   • Rendering returns raw BGRA bytes rather than a dart:ui Image, keeping the
     rendering surface usable outside Flutter.

   Notable fixes in the dev channel

   • Native library resolution in a Pub workspace (dev.4) — when running from
     a workspace member package, the native-assets pipeline stages the library to
     the workspace root .dart_tool/lib/. The loader now walks up from the
     working directory probing each ancestor, covering both single-package and
     workspace layouts on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
   • Dart 3.13 support (dev.4) — SDK constraint raised to ^3.13.0, verified
     end-to-end against the 3.13 native-assets pipeline on macOS, Linux (x64 and
     arm64), and Windows.

   Quality

   608 tests passing at 96.2% line coverage.

   Documentation

   • Package README: packages/betto_pdfium/README.md
   • Full specification and API docs: https://bettongia.github.io/pdfium
   • Changelog: packages/betto_pdfium/CHANGELOG.md

   Packages on pub.dev

   • betto_pdfium 0.1.0
   • betto_pdfium_ios 0.1.0

• betto_pdfiumpub.devA pure Dart package wrapping the PDFium library for PDF rendering, text extraction, and annotation support.