This is an android view pdf document programmitically tutorial and example.
We use pdf view android library called barteksc/AndroidPdfViewer, an open source pdf viewer library that is avaialble for free in android studio.
We create our project using android studio and we have the source available for download at the end of the tutorial.
Everybody knows PDFs, Portable Document Format. Am probably everybody has or uses them.Alot of information is rendered in PDFs and since android devices are the most popular devices around,we need a way of rendering these PDFs in our device.
Okay, there are PDF readers like Adobe and Foxit, but why not make yours as a side project while learning android development.Hey,with the wealth of libraries android has, its easier than you may think. You may make a quality PDF reader for yourself.
This is an example to introduce us by giving us a way to load PDFs into a GridView and render them. Then you can swipe through the pages,scroll, zoom a page etc. Here's a summary of what we do :
We are using Android PDF Viewer library so we need to add it as a dependency in our app level build.gradle. Moreover our Custom GridView has CardViews as our viewitems so lets add the appropriate support libraries.
You may use the later versions of this library. Our GridView will contain custom CardViews so we need to add the CardView dependency as well.
apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
android {
compileSdkVersion 24
buildToolsVersion "24.0.1"
defaultConfig {
applicationId "com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf"
minSdkVersion 15
targetSdkVersion 24
versionCode 1
versionName "1.0"
}
buildTypes {
release {
minifyEnabled false
proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
}
}
}
dependencies {
compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:24.1.1'
compile 'com.android.support:design:24.1.1'
compile 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:24.1.1'
compile 'com.github.barteksc:android-pdf-viewer:1.4.0'
}
Given that we shall be reading our PDF documents from our File System in android device/emulator,lets add the permission for reading from external storage.
android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE allows us read files from the device's external storage. Please make sure you add this as failure to do so will result in you being unable to read the external storage at runtime.
Moreover we will register two activities: one our main activity and the other the PDFViewer Activity.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
package="com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf">
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<application
android:allowBackup="true"
android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
android:label="@string/app_name"
android:supportsRtl="true"
android:theme="@style/AppTheme">
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:label="@string/app_name"
android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoActionBar">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<activity android:name=".PDF_Activity"></activity>
</application>
</manifest>
What are we working with PDF Documents. Yes, so lets do that in an Object Oriented way.Lets create a POJO data object to represent a PDF document with its properties like name and file path.
This is a data object that represents a single PDF document. The PDF will have the name and path as it's properties.
We then generate their getters and setters.
package com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf;
import android.net.Uri;
public class PDFDoc {
String name,path;
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getPath() {
return path;
}
public void setPath(String path) {
this.path = path;
}
}
Because we are working a custom gridview as our adapterview.It therefore needs its adapter.
Therefore We will derive from baseadapter, an abstract class from which other adapters like ArrayAdapter do derive.
public class CustomAdapter extends BaseAdapter {..}This class shall inflate our model layout into CardView view items of our gridview. So basically this gridview will contain cardviews with PDF documents.
This adapter class is also responsible for adapting our dataset into those respective views. A single cardview is comprising of image and text.
First a Context object as well as an arraylist of PDF Documents is passed to us via the constructor:
public CustomAdapter(Context c, ArrayList<PDFDoc> pdfDocs) {
this.c = c;
this.pdfDocs = pdfDocs;
}We also open activity,pdf activity when an item is clicked. We will create a method to do that for us:
private void openPDFView(String path)
{
Intent i=new Intent(c,PDF_Activity.class);
i.putExtra("PATH",path);
c.startActivity(i);
}As you can see we are using an intent, first instantiating, passing in the context as well as the target class.
Then using the putExtra() we pass the PATH and start the activity to open it.
package com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.net.Uri;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;
import android.widget.BaseAdapter;
import android.widget.ImageView;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.Toast;
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class CustomAdapter extends BaseAdapter {
Context c;
ArrayList<PDFDoc> pdfDocs;
public CustomAdapter(Context c, ArrayList<PDFDoc> pdfDocs) {
this.c = c;
this.pdfDocs = pdfDocs;
}
@Override
public int getCount() {
return pdfDocs.size();
}
@Override
public Object getItem(int i) {
return pdfDocs.get(i);
}
@Override
public long getItemId(int i) {
return i;
}
@Override
public View getView(int i, View view, ViewGroup viewGroup) {
if(view==null)
{
//INFLATE CUSTOM LAYOUT
view= LayoutInflater.from(c).inflate(R.layout.model,viewGroup,false);
}
final PDFDoc pdfDoc= (PDFDoc) this.getItem(i);
TextView nameTxt= (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.nameTxt);
ImageView img= (ImageView) view.findViewById(R.id.pdfImage);
//BIND DATA
nameTxt.setText(pdfDoc.getName());
img.setImageResource(R.drawable.pdf_icon);
//VIEW ITEM CLICK
view.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(View view) {
openPDFView(pdfDoc.getPath());
}
});
return view;
}
//OPEN PDF VIEW
private void openPDFView(String path)
{
Intent i=new Intent(c,PDF_Activity.class);
i.putExtra("PATH",path);
c.startActivity(i);
}
}
This is our main activity. It will be extending the AppCompatActivity.
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {..}
This activity is responsible for listing our pdf documents in a list of gridview. The user can the scroll through those pdf documents.
We will start by referencing the gridview by its id:
final GridView gv= (GridView) findViewById(R.id.gv);We are showing a gridview with cardviews with images and text. The images are the pdf icons while the textviews will show the pdf document name.
When the user clicks the pdf document, we render the document in a new activity.
We will also be retrieving our pdf documents from the device and hold them in an arraylist here.
We will have a method called getPDFs(). This method will read all PDF files from the Download's directory in our external storage. In that way we can get the PDF names and their paths and assign them to a PDFDoc instance. Then return an arraylist of PDFDocs.
To do this first we get the downlaod's folder:
File downloadsFolder= Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_DOWNLOADS);Then ensure it actually exists:
if(downloadsFolder.exists())
{
...
}Then read all the files inside it into a file array:
File[] files=downloadsFolder.listFiles();We will use the endsWith() method to filter out PDF documents:
if(file.getPath().endsWith("pdf"))
{
...
}package com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf;
import android.net.Uri;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Environment;
import android.support.design.widget.FloatingActionButton;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.GridView;
import java.io.File;
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
final GridView gv= (GridView) findViewById(R.id.gv);
FloatingActionButton fab = (FloatingActionButton) findViewById(R.id.fab);
fab.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(View view) {
gv.setAdapter(new CustomAdapter(MainActivity.this,getPDFs()));
}
});
}
private ArrayList<PDFDoc> getPDFs()
{
ArrayList<PDFDoc> pdfDocs=new ArrayList<>();
//TARGET FOLDER
File downloadsFolder= Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_DOWNLOADS);
PDFDoc pdfDoc;
if(downloadsFolder.exists())
{
//GET ALL FILES IN DOWNLOAD FOLDER
File[] files=downloadsFolder.listFiles();
//LOOP THRU THOSE FILES GETTING NAME AND URI
for (int i=0;i<files.length;i++)
{
File file=files[i];
if(file.getPath().endsWith("pdf"))
{
pdfDoc=new PDFDoc();
pdfDoc.setName(file.getName());
pdfDoc.setPath(file.getAbsolutePath());
pdfDocs.add(pdfDoc);
}
}
}
return pdfDocs;
}
}
This is the activity that actually renders the pdf document. The PDFs will be loaded from the device external storage and this activity will display them for viewing.
The path of the PDF document will be passed from the main activity via intent.
Then we load the pdf document via the path.
As an Activity this class will also derive from AppCompatActivity:
public class PDF_Activity extends AppCompatActivity {...}We will reference the PDFView from our layout:
PDFView pdfView= (PDFView) findViewById(R.id.pdfView);Beware that newer versions of PDF don't require you to specify the ScrollBar as we did here.
We will unpack or retrieve data that was sent via Intent from our MainActivity then use the getExtras() to get the path that was passed.
Intent i=this.getIntent();
String path=i.getExtras().getString("PATH");We will create a file from that path:
File file=new File(path);Then check if that file can be read:
if(file.canRead())
{
...
}
And load our PDF file into the PDFView:
pdfView.fromFile(file).defaultPage(1).onLoad(new OnLoadCompleteListener() {
@Override
public void loadComplete(int nbPages) {
Toast.makeText(PDF_Activity.this, String.valueOf(nbPages), Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
}).load();package com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.Toast;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PDFView;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.ScrollBar;
import com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.listener.OnLoadCompleteListener;
import java.io.File;
public class PDF_Activity extends AppCompatActivity {
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_pdf);
//PDFVIEW SHALL DISPLAY OUR PDFS
PDFView pdfView= (PDFView) findViewById(R.id.pdfView);
//SCROLLBAR TO ENABLE SCROLLING
ScrollBar scrollBar = (ScrollBar) findViewById(R.id.scrollBar);
pdfView.setScrollBar(scrollBar);
//VERTICAL SCROLLING
scrollBar.setHorizontal(false);
//SACRIFICE MEMORY FOR QUALITY
//pdfView.useBestQuality(true)
//UNPACK OUR DATA FROM INTENT
Intent i=this.getIntent();
String path=i.getExtras().getString("PATH");
//GET THE PDF FILE
File file=new File(path);
if(file.canRead())
{
//LOAD IT
pdfView.fromFile(file).defaultPage(1).onLoad(new OnLoadCompleteListener() {
@Override
public void loadComplete(int nbPages) {
Toast.makeText(PDF_Activity.this, String.valueOf(nbPages), Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
}).load();
}
}
}
Here's our PDF Activity layout. All XML Layouts and source code are in the link below so please download it and run.
We have a RelativeLayout as our root layout.
We then specify the PDFView element in our XML document. This will be responsible for rendering or viewing our pdf document.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
tools:context="com.tutorials.hp.gridviewpdf.PDF_Activity">
<com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.PDFView
android:id="@+id/pdfView"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/scrollBar"/>
<com.github.barteksc.pdfviewer.ScrollBar
android:id="@+id/scrollBar"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_alignParentEnd="true" />
</RelativeLayout>
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