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?

Answer 1

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;"

Eg 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.

Answer 2

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

• Open PDF in a WebView
• Open a pdf file inside a webview.

Answer 3

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();
}

Answer 4

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 :)

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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);

PS link of SkewPdfView library

SkewPdfView Github Page

Answer 7

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>

Answer 8

WebView don't provide direct functionality to open PDF from local storage. You can open pdf in external PDFViewer applications .

Wait it will take user to different application .

Now without using any extra library to open a PDF we can use PdfRenderer class to render a PDF.

PdfRenderer can render pdf on bitmap . Bitmap can be drawn to Image View to show the PDF in your application.

// create a new renderer
 PdfRenderer renderer = new PdfRenderer(getSeekableFileDescriptor());

 // let us just render all pages
 final int pageCount = renderer.getPageCount();
 for (int i = 0; i < pageCount; i++) {
     Page page = renderer.openPage(i);

     // say we render for showing on the screen
     page.render(mBitmap, null, null, Page.RENDER_MODE_FOR_DISPLAY);

     // do stuff with the bitmap

     // close the page
     page.close();
 }

 // close the renderer
 renderer.close();

Read more about it from the docs .

Answer 9

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.