Detect the Acrobat installation or any alternate way to open PDF

i have built a WPF application to view the PDF files using Interop.AcroPDFLib.dll, the problem is if the Adobe Acrobat reader is not installed on the client machine开发者_C百科 the application stops working and crashes.

Is there a way i can detect the Acrobat Reader installation before hand and then at the run time include the reference to the Interop.AcroPDFLib.dll other-wise show an error message?

OR

are there any better open source solutions available to display pdf files in WPF?

Regards.

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If any PDF capable app is properly installed then System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(@"C:\MyPDF.pdf"); start it with your PDF file...

As for detection you can check the registry at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe... for the Reader and/or Acrobat.

Another option would be to check for registered file association - on how check this SO answer Script to associate an extension to a program

EDIT - as per comment:

For a scenario where you need to "dynamically" use Interop adding the reference statically is not a good idea... an alternative way is to do COM the "old-fashoined way" using something similar to the following:

object A = Activator.CreateInstance (Type.GetTypeFromProgId (""));
object R = Type.GetTypeFromProgId ("").InvokeMember ("MyMethodName", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, A, new object[] {myParam1, myParam2});
Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject (A);

Relevant links:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wccyzw83.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hss5hw09.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/66btctbe.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.reflection.bindingflags.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.interopservices.marshal.finalreleasecomobject.aspx

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If any app/soft. is installed in Windows, using a installer, it generally creates a entry in Installed programs seen in control panel (i.e. in registry). So you can search for it, as Adobe Reader mostly comes in a installer and check validate the installation of Adobe reader.

For reference see artice1 article2

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Check for GUID in component services. Usually adobe reader has the same COM GUID. Check for installation. Is it available on c:\Program Files\Adobe .... or c:\Program Files x86\Adobe.... This is assume that adobe is installed on that folder. This is the light way to do. I search for file name AcroRd32.exe using:

Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\", AcroRd32.exe", SearchOption.AllDirectories)

if it is found, then you can check that the installation of adobe reader is OK or not.

You can call adobe pdf I using Process.Start and capture its exception and then kill its process. If it is throw exception then adobe reader is not installed or corrupted. otherwise it is installed

eg:

try
{
Process.Start(@"c:\your program files\Adobe\Adobe.exe");
} catch
{
   throw new Exception ("adobe is not installed or error");
}

You can customize above code by searching adobe reader file and then passed it into Process.Start parameter.

I dunno open source solution to display pdf using wpf. sorry