Load PDF documents on Android with PdfDocument class

Nutrient represents loaded PDF documents using instances of the PdfDocument class. A document can be loaded from various sources, including the app’s assets, the local device storage, a content provider, or any custom data source of your app.

Load documents

The PdfDocumentLoader class offers various methods for loading and opening PDF documents in a synchronous or asynchronous fashion. DocumentSource gives developers a generic structure to define the input source of a document. You can create a document source from a Uri or DataProvider:

// Using an Android Uri.
val document = PdfDocumentLoader.openDocument(Uri.fromFile(File("/path/to/document.pdf")))

// Using a custom `DataProvider`.
val assetsDataSource = DocumentSource(AssetDataProvider("document.pdf"))
val document = PdfDocumentLoader.openDocument(context, assetsDataSource)

// Using an Android Uri.
PdfDocument document = PdfDocumentLoader.openDocument(context, Uri.fromFile(new File("/path/to/document.pdf")));

// Using a custom `DataProvider`.
DocumentSource assetsDataSource = new DocumentSource(new AssetDataProvider("document.pdf"));
PdfDocument document = PdfDocumentLoader.openDocument(context, assetsDataSource);

To see a full list of available methods for loading documents, check out our API reference.

Document structure

Each PdfDocument instance consists of one or more pages (there are no PDF documents with zero pages). To get the total count of pages in a document, use the PdfDocument#getPageCount method. Page indices are zero-based and are in the half-open interval, [0, pageCount).

Page coordinates and sizes

Each page of a PDF document has its own coordinate space, which has its origin at the bottom left of the page, with x coordinates increasing to the right of the page, and y coordinates increasing to the top of the page. A detailed explanation of PDF coordinates can be found in our coordinate space conversions guide.

The size of a page (in PDF coordinates) can be retrieved by calling PdfDocument#getPageSize.