React ePub reader

An ePub-reader for react powered by EpubJS #react #epubjs #webpack #babel #standardjs

See demo

React wrapper for epubjs

React reader is a react-wrapper for epub.js, using the v.03 branch.

About

epub.js is a great library, and this is a wrapper for this library, making it easier to use in a React-app.

import {
  EpubView, // Underlaying epub-canvas (wrapper for epub.js iframe)
  EpubViewStyle, // Styles for EpubView, you can pass it to the instance as a style prop for customize it
  ReactReader, // A simple epub-reader with left/right button and chapter navigation
  ReactReaderStyle // Styles for the epub-reader it you need to customize it
} from "react-reader";

Basic usage

npm install react-reader --save

And in your react-component...

import React, { Component } from "react";
import { ReactReader } from "react-reader";

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div style={{ position: "relative", height: "100%" }}>
        {" "}
        // * Container needs a height..
        <ReactReader
          url={"/alice.epub"}
          title={"Alice in wonderland"}
          location={"epubcfi(/6/2[cover]!/6)"}
          locationChanged={epubcifi => console.log(epubcifi)}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

See src/App.js for an example of using the selection api in epubjs.

ReactReader props

• title [string] - the title of the book, displayed above the reading-canvas
• loadingView [element] - if you want to customize the loadingView
• showToc [bool] - whether to show the toc / toc-nav
• locationChanged [func] - a function that receives the current location while user is reading
• tocChanged [func] - when the reader has parsed the book you will receive an array of the chapters
• styles [object] - override the default styles
• swipeable [bool, default false] - enable swiping left/right with react-swipeable. Warning this will disable interacting with epub.js iframe content like selection

See also TypeScript definition for React Reader here (thanks to @rafaelsaback)

Additional props will be forwarded to the underlying EpubView component, like url, location, epubOptions, epubInitOptions and getRendition. See its props here

Container needs a height. The ReactReader will expand to 100% of width/height, so be sure to set a height on the parent element, either with position it absolute of window, set height or use paddingTop for proporcional scaling.

Optional use the underlying EpubView

This is just the plain epub canvas, you will then need to implement the reader stuff like chapter (toc) navigation and next/prev buttons. Take a look at the implementation in ReactReader.js

import React, { Component } from "react";
import { EpubView } from "react-reader";

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      /* The ReactReader will expand to 100% of width/height, so be sure to set a height on the parent element, either with position it absolute of window, set height or use paddingTop for proporsjonal scaling */
      <div style={{ position: "relative", height: "100%" }}>
        <EpubView
          url={"/alice.epub"}
          location={"epubcfi(/6/2[cover]!/6)"}
          locationChanged={epubcifi => console.log(epubcifi)}
          tocChanged={toc => console.log(toc)}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

EpubView props

• url [string, required] - url to the epub-file, if its on another domain, remember to add cors for the file. Epubjs fetch this by a http-call, so it need to be public available.
• loadingView [element] - if you want to customize the loadingView
• location [string, number] - set / update location of the epub
• locationChanged [func] - a function that receives the current location while user is reading
• tocChanged [func] - when the reader has parsed the book you will receive an array of the chapters
• styles [object] - override the default styles
• epubInitOptions [object] - pass custom properties to the epub init function, see epub.js
• epubOptions [object] - pass custom properties to the epub rendition, see epub.js's book.renderTo function
• getRendition [func] - when epubjs has rendered the epub-file you can get access to the epubjs-rendition object here

Handling not valid epub-files

A tip if you have problems with not valid epub-files is to override the build in DOMParser and modify the markup-string passed to its parseFromString function. This example fixes a not valid <title/> tag in an old epub, which would render as a blank page if not fixed:

const DOMParser = window.DOMParser

class OwnParser {
  parseFromString(markup, mime) {
    if (markup.indexOf('<title/>') !== -1) {
      markup = markup.replace('<title/>', '');
    }
    return new DOMParser().parseFromString(markup, mime)
  }
}

window.DOMParser = OwnParser

Usage in cordova

There is a limitation with iframe and srcdoc so you need to add this to your config.xml to make react-reader work within a cordova application:

<allow-navigation href="about:*" />

See stackoverflow.com/questions/39165545/cordova-iframe-with-html-inside-not-showing-on-ios-device