How to open local PDF file in WebView in Android?

Question

I want to open local (SD card) PDF file in a WebView.

I already tried this:

webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
webview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
webview.getSettings().setPluginsEnabled(true);
webview.getSettings().setAllowFileAccess(true);
File file = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() + "/test.pdf");

final Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(file);

webview.loadUrl(uri.toString());

But it's still not opening it, so let me know how I can open a PDF in WebView?

Try this webview.loadUrl("http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=http://myurl.com/demo.pdf"); — Tofeeq Ahmad, Jan 24 '13 at 09:00

Lepidopteron · Answer 1 · 2020-02-04T07:09:06.260

28

I know, this question is old.

But I really like the approach of Xamarin to make use of the pdf.js from Mozilla. It works on older Android versions, you don't need a special PDF Viewer app for this and you can easily display a PDF inside of your apps views hierarchy.

Git for this: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/

Additional default options (like standard zoom): https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Viewer-options

Just add the pdfjs files to your Assets directory:

And call it the following way:

// Assuming you got your pdf file:
File file = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() + "/test.pdf");

webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
WebSettings settings = webview.getSettings();
settings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
settings.setAllowFileAccessFromFileURLs(true);
settings.setAllowUniversalAccessFromFileURLs(true);
settings.setBuiltInZoomControls(true);
webview.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient());
webview.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=" + file.getAbsolutePath() + "#zoom=page-width");

Cool thing: If you want to reduce the amount of functionalities / controls. Go to the Assets/pdfjs/web/viewer.html file and mark certain controls as hidden. With

style="display: none;"

E.g. If you don't like the right toolbar:

<div id="toolbarViewerRight" style="display: none;">...</div>

Update

'URL scheme "file" is not supported'

Might occur for newer versions of pdfjs. With version 1.8.188 this error does not appear.

edited Feb 04 '20 at 07:09

answered Mar 29 '17 at 07:45

Lepidopteron

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Awesome answer :) – Ely Dantas Apr 21 '17 at 17:02
Can pdf inside Android Project assets folder be opnened? – CGR Jun 16 '17 at 00:10
@CGR You will need a file‘s reference, which also needs to be available for the script, so maybe you need to copy the file locally from the assets folder first: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38504987 – Lepidopteron Jun 16 '17 at 04:57
2

Lepidopteron thanks a lot, it worked great. I have pdf in assets, I copied it in private folder inside my app and opened it from there - no problems, no permissions mess. Used latest pdfjs 1.8.188 – Boris Gafurov Oct 19 '17 at 15:41
@BorisGafurov Glad it helped you! :-) – Lepidopteron Oct 19 '17 at 15:42
@Pihu Yes, it will – Lepidopteron Dec 12 '17 at 10:33
But i am unable to run this on Nougat Devices – Pihu Dec 12 '17 at 10:59
Yeah, it runs finally now.. But it is very slow. – Pihu Dec 12 '17 at 11:20
pdf.js zip file is around 40MB....I have to increase my app size by this much amout? – pallav bohara Mar 21 '18 at 11:40
@pallavbohara the apk zips the files once again, so it will not increase the apk size of 40MB, but rather a smaller value. I did not validate the impact on the apk's size, tho. – Lepidopteron Mar 22 '18 at 12:14
@NiyasNazar it should, so far I did not stumble over an API, which did not work anymore. If you do, please do edit my answer and add your observations made. – Lepidopteron Nov 16 '18 at 07:30
@Lepidopteron How would you make it work that way, while on the internet you can find so many threads about pdf.js not supporting the `file:///` fetching? Exact err message is 'URL scheme "file" is not supported' and you can find lots of threads about it. How does this work for you? – Android developer Jun 11 '19 at 08:39
@RadekKłos this approach renders the PDF with the framework - this requires some work if you‘d like to implement it yourself. Whilst the „file:///„ approach would make use of the system rendering. – Lepidopteron Jun 11 '19 at 14:28
1

@RadekKłos I was wondering the same and so I tried an older version of pdfjs, 1.8.188 version, mentioned in a comment above. And it worked. Instead it doesn't work with the latest version 2.1.266. So the URL scheme "file" not supported is a recent change. – DSoldo Sep 06 '19 at 14:53
@Lepidopteron - I'm hoping you or someone is still keeping an eye on this. I'm still having issues getting this to work in a native Android app. Using 1.8.188 version. Initially I was getting issues about SystemJS not being defined, however I npm install systemjs to the pdfjs package in my Android project. However now I'm getitng a different error: Failed to load file:///android_asset/pdfjs/web/app.js: Cross origin requests are only supported for protocol schemes: http, data, chrome, https.", source: file:///android_asset/pdfjs/node_modules/systemjs/dist/system.js (4) – niall8s Jul 07 '20 at 14:04
Ah now this issue is back to the unsupported file protocol scheme regarding trying to access the l10n.js stuff for localisation. Did anyone exclude this somehow? – niall8s Jul 07 '20 at 16:37

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

5

As @Sameer replied in your comment above, the only solution to view PDF in webview is through Google Docs' online viewer which will render and send back a readable version to your app.

Previously discussed here

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Mar 06 '13 at 09:02

James Wong

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@androidsanta nop, it was to be loaded from web. – James Wong Apr 30 '14 at 04:09
This work only with a remote PDF. If you want to open a local file like @girishce26, you have to use the CSmith's solution or this external plugin https://github.com/JoanZapata/android-pdfview – tryp Apr 13 '16 at 12:05

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 23 '12 at 13:51

You cannot. Using an Intent, you can open the PDF in an external viewer application like Acrobat Reader:

try
{
 Intent intentUrl = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
 intentUrl.setDataAndType(uri, "application/pdf");
 intentUrl.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
 mActivity.startActivity(intentUrl);
}
catch (ActivityNotFoundException e)
{
 Toast.makeText(mActivity, "No PDF Viewer Installed", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}

pallav bohara · Answer 4 · 2018-03-22T06:55:31.667

After going through several posts I came across this simple answer on Quora which pretty much do the work. Following are steps:-

Add this dependency in your gradle file:

compile 'com.github.barteksc:android-pdf-viewer:2.0.3'

activity_main.xml

 <com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PDFView
    android:id="@+id/pdfView"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
     />

MainActivity.java

package pdfviewer.pdfviewer;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PDFView;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.listener.OnLoadCompleteListener;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.listener.OnPageChangeListener;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.scroll.DefaultScrollHandle;
import com.shockwave.pdfium.PdfDocument;

import java.util.List;

public class MainActivity extends Activity implements OnPageChangeListener,OnLoadCompleteListener{
    private static final String TAG = MainActivity.class.getSimpleName();
    public static final String SAMPLE_FILE = "sample_pdf.pdf";
    PDFView pdfView;
    Integer pageNumber = 0;
    String pdfFileName;

    @Override    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);


        pdfView= (PDFView)findViewById(R.id.pdfView);
        displayFromAsset(SAMPLE_FILE);
    }

    private void displayFromAsset(String assetFileName) {
        pdfFileName = assetFileName;

        pdfView.fromAsset(SAMPLE_FILE)
                .defaultPage(pageNumber)
                .enableSwipe(true)

                .swipeHorizontal(false)
                .onPageChange(this)
                .enableAnnotationRendering(true)
                .onLoad(this)
                .scrollHandle(new DefaultScrollHandle(this))
                .load();
    }


    @Override    public void onPageChanged(int page, int pageCount) {
        pageNumber = page;
        setTitle(String.format("%s %s / %s", pdfFileName, page + 1, pageCount));
    }


    @Override    public void loadComplete(int nbPages) {
        PdfDocument.Meta meta = pdfView.getDocumentMeta();
        printBookmarksTree(pdfView.getTableOfContents(), "-");

    }

    public void printBookmarksTree(List<PdfDocument.Bookmark> tree, String sep) {
        for (PdfDocument.Bookmark b : tree) {

            Log.e(TAG, String.format("%s %s, p %d", sep, b.getTitle(), b.getPageIdx()));

            if (b.hasChildren()) {
                printBookmarksTree(b.getChildren(), sep + "-");
            }
        }
    }

}

You have to make sure that your asset folder contains sample_pdf.pdf (Library also support opening pdf from Uri and SDCard)

Happy coding :)

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 11 '18 at 08:43

From android OS 5.0(lollipop) on-wards you can use PdfRenderer instead of webview/library. You can use this class to show pdf's within the app.

If you want to support OS lower than that you can use a library/other approach mentioned in other answer as there is no native support.

Read more about it from the docs, you can also refer this example

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 02 '20 at 14:41

you can use the SkewPdfView library for loading pdf from remote or local urls.

First of all, Add following in your root build.gradle:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        ...
        maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
    }
}

and add the SkewPdfView Library as:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.github.naya-aastra:SkewPdfView:1.1'
}

Now Include SkewPdfView in your layout:

<com.nayaastra.skewpdfview.SkewPdfView
    android:id="@+id/skewPdfView"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"/>

Save all the local files in assets folder and then use SkewPdfView as follows. Load a PDF file programmatically as:

SkewPdfView skewPdfView;
skewPdfView = findViewById(R.id.skewPdfView);
String pdfLink = "LINK TO ASSET FILE";
skewPdfView.loadPdf(pdfLink);

P.S. link of SkewPdfView library

SkewPdfView Github Page

Rishabh · Answer 7 · 2021-02-01T14:07:05.147

WebView can easily be used for displaying PDF file from a web url but if you have local PDF file, then it becomes a pain.

In my case i first stored a reference of my local file:-

File file = new File(getExternalFilesDir(null),"your_pdf_file.pdf");

Then i obtained file path URI of my local PDF file using FileProvider and started an intent for opening it using existing applications that can open PDF documents:-

try{
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
    intent.setDataAndType(FileProvider.getUriForFile(BaseActivity.this,BuildConfig.APPLICATION_ID +".provider",file), "application/pdf");
    intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
    intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION);
    startActivity(intent);
    } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
    Toast.makeText(BaseActivity.this,"No Application Available to View PDF",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }

Also to use FileProvider API, you need to declare it in manifest as:-

        <provider
            android:name="androidx.core.content.FileProvider"
            android:authorities="${applicationId}.provider"
            android:exported="false"
            android:grantUriPermissions="true">
            <meta-data
                android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
                android:resource="@xml/file_paths" />
        </provider>

And declare file_paths.xml under XML resource folder as:-

<paths>
    <external-path name="external_files" path="."/>
</paths>

score -2 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 17 '14 at 09:39

-2

WebView can not open a .pdf file. The most popular solution (google docs' url + your url in WebView) just shows you converted by google docs pictures. However there is still no simple way to open .pdf from url.

answered Jul 17 '14 at 09:39

Grecha

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1
11

How to open local PDF file in WebView in Android?

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