LiveCode Forums

There has been some discussion about viewing PDFs inside an app on Android.

If you want to include any PDF view inside your LiveCode app on Windows, Mac or iOS, you can simply use a web browser and set the path to the PDF to it. Very simple, working nicely.

If you want to do the same on Android, this approach is not working, because Android doesn't support viewing PDF files natively in the browser. This is a real problem if you want to write an app that has the abilty to show PDF files inside the app.

See the discussion on this forum: http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=14519

The recommended solution was to use the Google Docs API to render the PDF inside the web browser. This can be done by putting "http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=" before the URL of the PDF.

The remaining problem is: It won't work with a local PDF file that is embedded into your livecode-app bundle (because it's not accessible by Google).
And the main problem: It will never work offline.

Here is a new approach I found on a Xamarin-blog. Instead of the Google API the PDF.js library from Mozilla was used. It can be downloaded and used offline freely.

Link here (solution 3): http://www.subodhjena.com/2016/03/12/xa ... d-webview/

Has anybody tried this with LiveCode on Android? I haven't yet, but it sounds possible for me.

Is this the universal workaround many have been waiting for?

Kroka

I had to create a app recently on Android that had to display over 400 PDF's the only way I found I could do this unfortunately was to use a PDF reader app then launch the PDF with the open URL function.

Your idea of PDF.js and the brorser widget works! I'll post a solution soon!

Here my first experiment with PDF.js:

--allow-file-access-from-files

Hi MaxV,

not bad. Do you have any example source code (JavaScript files) you could share?

If this approach is working generally it can solve a lot of problems.

Kroka

http://www.livecode-blog.de

Hi MaxV, well done.
This looks a very promising approach to the PDF problem.
Looking forward to seeing some code.

Hi,
I'm working about a problem with the livecode browser.
The livecode browser is now Chromium CEF ( https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef ), and chrome (or chromium) must have a particolar option to read local files: --allow-file-access-from-files
Otherwise you get the following error:
Cross origin requests are only supported for protocol schemes: http, data, chrome, chrome-extension, https, chrome-extension-resource.
So at the present the browser uses the local javascript files to create a local PDF reader, but this reader can't read local files, beacause the browser policies block it!!!

Hi All,

Looks like adding this particular option: -–allow-file-access-from-files
to browser CEF requires compilation from sources when building this DLL:

http://www.magpcss.org/ceforum/viewtopi ... =6&t=13630

Does browser CEF allows this option: --disable-web-security ???

Al

Hi,
I discovered that on Android Livecode uses the Android default browser (usually Chrome), so just unpack https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/relea ... 0-dist.zip somewhere and point widget URL property to the file viewer.html . User can select an display the PDF in your livecode app.
If you wont to display a PDF directly, change the file viewer.js: the line

Here is a screenshot:


WOW!!!!

This is the code:
########CODE to copy and paste#######
on mouseUp
if the environment is "mobile" then
set the URL of widget 1 to (specialFolderPath("engine") & "/pdfjs/web/viewer.html")
else
set itemDel to "/"
set the defaultFolder to item 1 to -2 of (the effective fileName of this stack)
set the url of widget 1 to "file:///home/max/Scaricati/Livecode%20PDF/test.pdf"
end if
end mouseUp
#####END OF CODE generated by http://tinyurl.com/j8xf3xq with livecode 9.0.0-dp-5#####

Did you ever create a PDF reader with so few lines?

MaxV wrote:Here is a screenshot:

WOW!!!!

Did you ever create a PDF reader with so few lines?

intresting stuff.
and does it work on real devices too? i did some tests and it seems it does not…
?

regards.

Does it load the first test page at least?

oh, don't worry. after other few hours i managed to make my "livecode universal multiplatform pdf reader".
the culprit was the minimun android version chosen when building the app (it was 4.1 during my first tests). if "2.3" is selected then the "XMLHttpRequest: Cross origin requests not supported for "file://"" is… well, supported. and, more over, i had to use the old way building my own browser (the widget seems to be not reliable, in my context).
but with your brillant suggestion about pdf.js + a mobile browser well set + android 2.3 it seems all working like a charme, on android, iphone, macOs… (not yet tested on windows by now)

oh, last thing, my contribution to this: a slight change to viewer.js.
if you set DEFAULT_URL as then you're able to pass the location of your pdf file by using this address format: instead of having it hard coded in the js file.
example: regards.

I'd be grateful for any answers to some basic questions about this solution.

1. Does this allow for PDF viewing inside a LiveCode app or does it jump out of the LiveCode app?
2. Does it use the following LiveCode?

   Code: Select all

   mobileControlCreate “browser”

3. Will it work with LiveCode Community current stable release (8.1.6)?
   
   ...and now having had a quick look at the LiveCode Dictionary for widget
4. What is the list of all things you need to do for the solution? eg. do you have to build your own widget from a Builder extension? (something I know nothing about)
5. Assuming widgets are important in all this, where is the best place to find out more about them in general (including their URL property)?

Thanks!