from the sourcecode at http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/build/pdf.js
/**
* This is the main entry point for loading a PDF and interacting with it.
* NOTE: If a URL is used to fetch the PDF data a standard XMLHttpRequest(XHR)
* is used, which means it must follow the same origin rules that any XHR does
* e.g. No cross domain requests without CORS.
*
* @param {string|TypedAray|object} source Can be an url to where a PDF is
* located, a typed array (Uint8Array) already populated with data or
* and parameter object with the following possible fields:
* - url - The URL of the PDF.
* - data - A typed array with PDF data.
* - httpHeaders - Basic authentication headers.
* - password - For decrypting password-protected PDFs.
*
* @return {Promise} A promise that is resolved with {PDFDocumentProxy} object.
*/
So a standard XMLHttpRequest(XHR) is used for retrieving the document. The Problem with this is that XMLHttpRequests do not support data: uris (eg. data:application/pdf;base64,JVBERi0xLjUK...).
But there is the possibility of passing a typed Javascript Array to the function. The only thing you need to do is to convert the base64 string to a Uint8Array. You can use this function found at https://gist.github.com/1032746
var BASE64_MARKER = ';base64,';
function convertDataURIToBinary(dataURI) {
var base64Index = dataURI.indexOf(BASE64_MARKER) + BASE64_MARKER.length;
var base64 = dataURI.substring(base64Index);
var raw = window.atob(base64);
var rawLength = raw.length;
var array = new Uint8Array(new ArrayBuffer(rawLength));
for(var i = 0; i < rawLength; i++) {
array[i] = raw.charCodeAt(i);
}
return array;
}
tl;dr
var pdfAsDataUri = "data:application/pdf;base64,JVBERi0xLjUK..."; // shortened
var pdfAsArray = convertDataURIToBinary(pdfAsDataUri);
PDFJS.getDocument(pdfAsArray)