android: open a pdf from my app using the built in pdf viewer

Question

This was my original question:

I want to be able to open a pdf file in my app using the android's built in pdf viewer app, but i dont know how to start other apps. I'm sure i have to call start activity, i just dont know how to identify the app im opening and how to pass the file to that specific app.

Anyone have a clue?

I just learned that the pdf viewer i have on my phone is actually made by HTC and that Adobe just barely released their android pdf viewer (which is great). So the new question is this: how do i verify that the user has installed adobe's viewer, and then how do i open the file in that app from my app?

Hissing

AFAIK there is no built-in PDF viewer in Android. Adobe launched its official Reader port for Android just a couple of days ago: techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/… , but you still need to get it from the Market. – Explicate

oh, as it would turn out, my phone came with an HTC made pdf viewer... fancy that. ok then, assuming that the user has this adobe pdf viewer already installed on their device, how would i use it? – Hissing

I don't have an answer but I was wondering if you got this sorted, and if so, how did you do it? This is very relevant to what I need to do. – Ooze

Karakuri's answer is great for opening a pdf with any viewer, not just Adobe's – Hissing

possible duplicate of PDF Library for Android - PDFBox? – Ardath

How can this be a duplicate? This question is a year older than that one, and This question isn't about a pdf library, its about opening pdf files in other apps. – Hissing

Answer 1

AFAIK, Adobe has not documented any public Intents it wants developers to use.

You can try an ACTION_VIEW Intent with a Uri pointing to the file (either on the SD card or MODE_WORLD_READABLE in your app-local file store) and a MIME type of "application/pdf".

Apostate

Ok that sounds cool... how would i implement that? This is very new to me. – Hissing

Tried this one because I don't want the files to be stored on the sd-card. Unfortunately Adobe Reader won't open files from the app dir (created with MODE_WORLD_READABLE). Anyone solved this so far? – Nuzzle

it always says file does not exist or cannot be read. i have tried with 8 different PDF files that are readable in my device and PC. – Besotted

What if i have web url (http:xyx.com/a.pdf) ? – Tessler

It's better to use a FileProvider as MODE_WORLD_READABLE was deprecated in API level 17 – Toddle

Can someone tell me how can I put a button at the bottom when a PDF is being displayed? I want to put some extra functionality to the button related to that PDF. – Bumgardner

Answer 2

You can programmatically determine whether a suitable application exists on the user's device, without catching exceptions.

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
        Uri.parse("path-to-document"));
intent.setType("application/pdf");
PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();
List<ResolveInfo> activities = pm.queryIntentActivities(intent, 0);
if (activities.size() > 0) {
    startActivity(intent);
} else {
    // Do something else here. Maybe pop up a Dialog or Toast
}

Laveralavergne

Answer 3

            FileFinalpath = SdCardpath + "/" + Filepath + Filename;
            File file = new File(FileFinalpath);
            if (file.exists()) {
                Uri filepath = Uri.fromFile(file);
                Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
                intent.setDataAndType(filepath, "application/pdf");
                intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);

                try {
                    startActivity(intent);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    alert.showAlertDialog(PDF_Activity.this, "File Not Started...","File Not Started From SdCard ", false);             
                    Log.e("error", "" + e);
                }

            } else {
                alert.showAlertDialog(PDF_Activity.this, "File Not Found...","File Not Found From SdCard ", false);             

            }

Passus

Answer 4

Although this is a pretty old topic, here is a solution for opening a PDF that is in the asset/ folder with an external PDF reader app. It uses a custom content provider: https://github.com/commonsguy/cwac-provider

Using this you can define any file to be provided from the assets/ or res/raw/ folder.

Try it! Best and easiest solution I found so far.

Resorcinol

Answer 5

I was also faced same issue when was trying to display PDF on android device and finally end up with the solution (3rd party PDF library integration)

https://github.com/JoanZapata/android-pdfview

while I have tested multiple libraries for this listed below which are also working,

https://github.com/jblough/Android-Pdf-Viewer-Library

& mupdf which comes with the ndk flavour (https://code.google.com/p/mupdf/downloads/detail?name=mupdf-1.2-source.zip&can=2&q=) and need to extract with NDK and then use it in application as a jar or java etc. nice article to explain the use of this library @ http://dixitpatel.com/integrating-pdf-in-android-application/

Chancroid

Answer 6

Android has a built in framework from Android 5.0 / Lollipop, it's called PDFRenderer. If you can make the assumption that your users have Android 5.0, it's probably the best solution.

There's an official example on Google's developer site:

http://developer.android.com/samples/PdfRendererBasic/index.html

It doesn't support annotation or other more advanced features; for those your really back to either using an Intent to open a full app, or embedding an SDK like mupdf.

(Disclaimer: I very occasionally do work on mupdf.)

Oday

Oh wow! I'm so excited about this! I still have to support earlier versions, and I have long since moved on from the project that prompted my original question. However, I am super happy to know about this. – Hissing

Answer 7

In addition to the ones marked as answer you would need these permissions in the manifest.xml

**

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

**

Hydrazine

Answer 8

Add FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW)
Uri outputFileUri = FileProvider.getUriForFile(getActivity(), BuildConfig.APPLICATION_ID + ".provider", file); 
intent.setDataAndType(outputFileUri, "application/pdf"); 
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION); 
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP); 
Intent in = Intent.createChooser(intent, "Open File");
startActivity(in);

also add provider_paths.xml at res -> xml folder and need to add below code at manifests

<application>
   <provider
            android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
            android:authorities="${applicationId}.provider"
            android:exported="false"
            android:grantUriPermissions="true"
            tools:replace="android:authorities">
            <meta-data
                tools:replace="android:resource"
                android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
                android:resource="@xml/provider_paths" />
        </provider>
 </application>

Meisel

addFlag & setFlag what are the differences @Rezaul ? – Mate

@Mate you can check differences between addFlag and setFlag using this link #6664689 – Meisel