9 Answers

• Accepted Answer

  With some of the new APIs that have been exposed, this is now a lot easier. You don't need to hack anything in to the source code. Take a look at the following:

  try {
      var f = Ti.Filesystem.getFile('your.pdf');
      Ti.Android.currentActivity.startActivity(Ti.Android.createIntent({
          action: Ti.Android.ACTION_VIEW,
          type: 'application/pdf',
          data: f.getNativePath()
      }));
  }
  catch (err) {
      var alertDialog = Titanium.UI.createAlertDialog({
          title: 'No PDF Viewer',
          message: 'We tried to open a PDF but failed. Do you want to search the marketplace for a PDF viewer?',
          buttonNames: ['Yes','No'],
          cancel: 1
      });
      alertDialog.show();
      alertDialog.addEventListener('click', function(evt) {
          if (evt.index == 0) {
              Ti.Platform.openURL('http://search?q=pdf');
          }
      });
  }
  

• Actually, I have a better answer now.

  If you look at the source for what Titanium.Platform.openURL is doing on Android, you'll see it's creating and starting an intent. This works great for PDFs on most Android devices.

  But it doesn't work exactly like it should, and I found it didn't work at all on a bunch of HTC android devices.

  I got around this by pulling the source for Titanium Mobile down, and adding a new method to the Titanium.Platform: "openURLWithType". It looks something like this:

  public boolean openURLWithType(String url, String type) {
                 if (DBG) {
                         Log.d(LCAT, "Launching viewer for: " + url);
                 }
                 Uri uri = Uri.parse(url);
                 Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri);
                 intent.setDataAndType(uri, type);
                 intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
                 try {
                         getTiContext().getActivity().startActivity(intent);
                         return true;
                 } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
                         Log.e(LCAT,"Activity not found: " + url, e);
                 }
                 return false;
  }
  

  Two small differences:
  1) intent.setDataAndType(uri, type) will let you specify what you're linking to so that third party apps can pick it up.
  2) intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP)

  Then I can do the following and the PDF is properly launched:

  if (Ti.Platform.openURLWithType('my.pdf', 'application/pdf')) {
     // success!
  }
  else {
     alert('You need to download a PDF viewer from the market!');
  }
  

  I'm working with the latest code from the 1.4x branch on github. I remember hearing rumor that they were adding support for this in 1.5 or something, but I don't know anything definite.

  DM me @dawsontoth on Twitter if you want to know more about this approach…

• you can simply open it using Google viewer
  http://docs.google.com/viewer?pli=1

• I'm new to android and I'm trying to develop an application which creates the ".pdf" files i.e. i have one form(contains the information of the person) this information should be stored in the .pdf format.. so how to do this ???please help me out in this…

• I was able to load a PDF inside the android browser using Pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js

  It's a javascript library the renders it into the HTML 5 Canvas element. It's a little heavy. That's the only downside. It renders out near perfect though. Also, I was able to get it to work on Android 4.0+ in the emulator. I tried it on my android device which is 2.2.2 and it didn't work.

• To view pdf you can use MPDF libraries. It's free and you can also use annotation and highlight the text features. More details you will get on http://www.mupdf.com

  there are also some pdf viewer apis that you can use:
  1. apdfviewer
  2. droidreader

• i was wondering whether this vb.net pdf viewer can integrate with the android system. if so, then everything will become much easier. you can load and and process pdf documents.

• Hi,

  Get the pdf from resourcesDirectory, and trying to write into tempDirectory.
  After successfully saved into tempDirectory, try to open in the Adobe Reader. Unable to open getting error
  message like file corrupted. Please help me to write the pdf in proper way.

  var pdfFile = Ti.Filesystem.getFile(Ti.Filesystem.resourcesDirectory,'My_PDF.pdf');

   setTimeout(function()
   {
          var tmpFile = Ti.Filesystem.getFile(Ti.Filesystem.tempDirectory,'tmpFile.pdf');
          tmpFile.write(pdfFile.read());
          Ti.API.info("Temp Directories:" + Ti.Filesystem.tempDirectory);
      },1000);
  

  Thanks in Advance..

• if you need to open/view PDF file in your own app go to the marketplace Android PDF Reader. The demo is available to see how does it look like