The core part of my application is load PDF online and user have access to download it as per their given rights.
The problem I am facing is that I want to load pdf online. After many research I have found that,
There are likely two ways to show pdf online in android:
1) In Web view by loading simple hosted URL
2) By google doc.
But in our case, if we use way (1), the mobile web view does not redirect hosted url of PDF.
And if we use way (2), then there are certain limitations of the google docs regarding the file sizes. (Small pdf it will load like 5 to 10 with size of 1MB)
But after loading PDF with the size of 2 or 3 MB it's also giving me error as "No PREVIEW AVAILABLE" and its continuously giving me this error opening different urls.
So it seems there is still no easy solution for viewing a pdf from url (online without downloading pdf).
The other way to open pdf online is that we can open it in any other third party applications like browser, adobe pdf reader or any kind of pdf viewer application available in the device.
Cons: If we open pdf in browser then it will get downloaded automatically and if we open it in any third party application then they have options to download the pdf.
Please give me some solution to read the PDF online.
And if there are any paid pdf SDK availble which gives functionality of loading pdf online from URL, then please provide information of that too.
Please also suggest me some pdf viewer library for displaying pdf online.
I have used many of the library, but it increases my application's size to 8 to 10 MB.
Thanks in advance.
The suggested primary solution,
Download the file, store it in the app specific folder so users don't have access. For viewers who don't have access rights to download it, you will delete the file as they leave the view. For viewers who have access rights to download it, they will be given an option to copy the file to their SD card (an accessible location) and then you will delete the original file as they leave the view.
For storing in app specific directory to restrict user access,
http://www.grokkingandroid.com/how-to-correctly-store-app-specific-files-in-android/
Also use a library to view the pdf(MUCH SIMPLER), choose an appropriate one from here
https://android-arsenal.com/search?q=pdf
Alternate solution,
If security is a major concern, you can encrypt the pdf file and store it on the server. And decrypt the file when you download it to the device.
For added security, don't store the file as pdf, just store it as a file. Download it as a file. Set type as pdf when you want to access it.
Conclusion,
Data wise, Even if you load it online, the device will consume almost same data as downloading the pdf. (Infact for viewing something online, your device downloads the data and stores it in the cache and you can view it)
Security wise, only a rooted phone will be able to access the file but that too for as long as you have decided to store it.
I suggest you check out PDF.js, a Javascript library from Mozilla to render PDF's in a browser. You can adapt this into a WebView easily, and display PDF's without downloading them.
Here is an open source app which does something similar to what you're looking for
Related
We have a file server on which we place PDF documents and then embed links to them in a smart device app. Up until recently, using links to the PDF documents starting with http:// worked fine for Android and iPhone users. All could load the PDF file just fine. Then a few months back (approximately) Android phone users started reporting they would get an error when trying to load any PDF. Yet iPhone users had no issues loading the same PDF document. It was verified that these PDF documents (several) were not corrupted and opened fine when placed on another file server.
I have an iPhone so I can't give you the exact error msg received by Android users but to reproduce it, it was along the lines of... click the link to the PDF, a button appears showing View PDF, click that button and several apps appear to choose the app to open the PDF with, click one (like Adobe Reader, or Google Drive) and an error appears stating the file could not be opened and may be corrupted of the wrong syntax.
Tonight I found the solution.
The url to the PDF on all these documents on our server had been like http://...
but when I changed it to https://... it works fine.
I can't find ANYWHERE any mention of a change by Google that this is now a requirement.
My question...
Can someone explain and/or point me to a reference that explains why https must be used in embedded links to PDF documents? It seems like a pretty big deal to make this a requirement and not tell anyone. My searching the internet has so far not turned up anything.
I'm looking for a way to display a pdf that is loaded in a webview.
The case is as follows:
- We load a (external) web application inside a webview.
- The web application is secured, users have to login to access their data.
- When the user has logged in there is a button for downloading a pdf file.
- On iOS the pdf file is being displayed inside the webview, on Android it isn't.
- It is not possible to access the pdf by using a webservice instead of the webview (so, Titanium.Network.HTTPClient cannot be used)
We tried several solutions that we found on the internet. Unfortunately, till now without any success.
We tried:
- Google's documentviewer: http://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=. This is not working because the pdf is 'behind' a username/password. Google is not aware of the session.
- Saving the pdf to the local file system and open it with Android Intent. We did not succeed in saving the pdf on the local filesystem.
The last option (saving the pdf and open it by using Ti.Android.Intent) seems to be the best option. But is it possible to save a pdf from a webview???
Maybe an external module (or using pdf.js) is also an option.
Can someone point me in the right direction.
We even don't know if what we want is possible?
Any help is really appreciated.
Stefan.
We are working on an android app that generates PDFs based on app contents on users' request. We are providing an option to launch an email agent and attach the generate PDF, but we also want the user be able to view the document later at any time. On android, there are no stock file explorer, so our first thought was to show on the stock Downloads app's file list. We've tried the following two methods but without luck.
We firstly tried to save the PDF to the default download folder (given by calling Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_DOCUMENTS)) and invoke media scanner, but the file doesn't show up in the Downloads app's list. It's shown in Adobe Acrobat's local document list though.
After some research, it seems that the Downloads app would only show files that downloaded though DownloadManager, so we tried to generate the PDF in a temporary directory and call DownloadManager to download it, but, somehow expected, it complains that we can only download via HTTP(S), so this approach isn't working as well.
Is there any other solution?
well if you have to provide access to the document without any file explorer app, i think your approach is correct it to allow to store it in the Download lists. To achive this you can use Nanohttpd in your application to host your pdf document and then invoke the DownloadManager download action using HTTP(S) to your webapp (you will have to create a small webapp to handle the download request) hosted on localhost server.
Am developing an offline pdf reader, which will download pdf files from remote and store inside the directory(say Android->data->com.example.test) and it will be shown in my app and i can read both in online and offline.
My issue is, If I open any PDFViewers like Adobe,Radaee viewers I can see my PDF's.
How can i avoid this. I dont want to show them in other apps.
This is not intended behaviour. we can control. Am looking for solution.
Example : Whatsapp's media like albums,profilepictures will be stored in device. We can view it. If you open any external Imageviewers we cant see the Profile Pictures. We can see the Media files. But Profile pics will be hidden. I need the exact solution.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Imran.
Store the PDF on internal storage. You are presently storing the PDF on external storage.
I'm developing an application to read PDF Files.
So, that my application itself has to read pdf Files. so which library is the best to show pdf files.
I have read a dozen of related articles but I couldn't get the idea.
There is a button on the front page, by clicking that button user gets access to sdcard. all the folders are under his fingers. on opening folders if user open .pdf file , it will open other wise a toast is shown, "this is not a pdf file".
It is hard to find a free and stable library. If you are opting for free try APV PDF Viewer
Make sure you read the license if you are planning of use it.
In one of my applications where I had to display pdf files inside the app, I used radaee pdf viewer. Easy to use, deals with fonts, and maybe stable.Problem is, it is not free. You can try it for free, but you will have a water mark in every page.
Hope this helps. Pdf in android app is not a walk in the park. I think that is the main reason that there are not tons of pdf viewers in google play. Good luck.