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?

Answer 1

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
}

Answer 2

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".

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);             

            }

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.

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/

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.)

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" />

**

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>