Pdf file is not able to load in android webview but able to load in external browser

Question

I have the webpage created with angular js file. There are pdf files inside the webpage we want to download and show. when clicking the pdf file, it just show loading and nth happened. Also shouldOverrideUrlLoading method is never called. This method is not deprecated. We tried to load the url in external browser and open the pdf, it successfully download and open the pdf file. I would like to know is there any webview setting I missed out? current webview settings in my implementation is as below . Kindly help. thank you

webView?.settings?.builtInZoomControls = true
webView?.settings?.domStorageEnabled = true
webView?.settings?.allowFileAccess = true
webView?.settings?.allowContentAccess = true

Answer 1

You should try this one might be it work by WebViewClient.

Check out this -- https://stackoverflow.com/a/14201778/18858169

Answer 2

PDF is a file format NOT handled by WebView, it's designed to show web content, not some documents

if you really want to show PDF inside WebView then you should use some web application, which can take a PDF file (or URL pointing on some) and render content of your file in a "web way", thus WebView could print it

for example Google have such web app and you can open PDFs in it using some of below URLs (these may changed)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://customdomain.com/pdffile.pdf
https://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=http://customdomain.com/pdffile.pdf
https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://customdomain.com/pdffile.pdf

note that you are basing on 3rd-party service - your PDF may be online, but 3rd-party companys server-side may be down or changed routing and your hardcoded URL prefix stop working

and if you want to show "real" PDF then use PdfRenderer class, which will give you a set of Bitmaps, which can be shown with ImageView, no WebView needed