Xamarin.forms display PDF in webview not working

Question

I download a pdf stream from my server. In my app I save the bytearray to a the local folder as pdf. But when I open it in the webview, it just shows a white page.

I

Answer 1

Following approach will allow you to view pdf in xamarin forms. If you are trying to open one from azure blob or you have valid URl.

WebView webView = new WebView();
var page = new ContentPage();
webView.Source = "https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://yourpdfurl.pdf";
page.Content = webView;
Navigation.PushModalAsync(page);

Answer 2

If I remember correctly, you can display a "remote" PDF in a webview on iOS. With Android there are some problems. I suggest to take a look to this repo OpenPDF. I use a CustomRenderer and a google tool to display the PDF. I have had some problems with some Android version... but you can take a look.(here a blog)

Otherwise there is @AdamPedley suggestion to use PDF JS Viewer Adam Pedley The code is here.

This is the CustomRenderer for Android

[assembly: ExportRenderer (typeof(CustomWebView), typeof(CustomWebViewRenderer))]
namespace DisplayPDF.Droid
{
    public class CustomWebViewRenderer : WebViewRenderer
    {
        protected override void OnElementChanged (ElementChangedEventArgs<WebView> e)
        {
            base.OnElementChanged (e);

            if (e.NewElement != null) {
                var customWebView = Element as CustomWebView;
                Control.Settings.AllowUniversalAccessFromFileURLs = true;
                Control.LoadUrl (string.Format ("file:///android_asset/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file={0}", string.Format ("file:///android_asset/Content/{0}", WebUtility.UrlEncode (customWebView.Uri))));
            }
        }
    }
}