Extending PdfActivity with Custom Activities

Displaying documents using the PdfActivity is sufficient in most cases. Nonetheless, there are situations where customizations beyond pure styling are necessary. For more flexibility, you can extend the PdfActivity and implement your own custom activities.

Since a PdfActivity and any activities deriving from it need special intent data (document sources, passwords, configuration, etc.) you need to create a special launch Intent using the PdfActivityIntentBuilder that will carry all of this information. The builder allows you to set your activity class using its #activity method. For a comprehensive example of what is possible with customization, take a look at the CustomLayoutExample or the CustomActionsExample inside the Catalog app.

Creating Your Activity

The first step for implementing a custom activity is to subclass the PdfActivity. Please note that your custom activity does not need to override #onCreate, and it does not need to define or inflate a layout. The layout will be set up by the PdfActivity parent class and can be using the PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder#layout when launching the activity:

class MyCustomActivity : PdfActivity() {

    override fun onPrepareOptionsMenu(menu: Menu): Boolean {
        var handled = super.onPrepareOptionsMenu(menu)

        // Custom action bar menu creation.

        return handled
    }

    override fun onDocumentLoaded(document: PdfDocument) {
        // Document is ready to use.
    }

    override fun onDocumentLoadFailed(exception: Throwable) {
        // Add your fancy error handling here.
    }
}
public class MyCustomActivity extends PdfActivity {

    @Override public boolean onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        boolean handled = super.onPrepareOptionsMenu(menu);

        // Custom action bar menu creation.

        return handled;
    }

    @Override public void onDocumentLoaded(PdfDocument document) {
        // Document is ready to use.
    }

    @Override public void onDocumentLoadFailed(Throwable exception) {
        // Add your fancy error handling here.
    }
}

Next, you need to add this activity to your AndroidManifest.xml so you can launch it. You can also define the android:theme property to set a custom theme:

<activity
    android:name="com.pspdfkit.example.MyCustomActivity"
    android:label="@string/title_activity_custom"
    android:theme="@style/MyApp.Theme" />

To launch MyCustomActivity, first create a PdfActivityConfiguration, then create a launching intent using the PdfActivityIntentBuilder, and finally call Activity#startActivity with the intent you created:

val config = PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder(context).build()
val intent = PdfActivityIntentBuilder.fromUri(context, uri)
    .configuration(config)
    .activity(MyCustomActivity::class.java)
    .build()

// Start the `MyCustomActivity` like any other activity.
context.startActivity(intent)
final PdfActivityConfiguration config = new PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder(context).build();
final Intent intent = PdfActivityIntentBuilder.fromUri(context, uri)
    .configuration(config)
    .activity(MyCustomActivity.class)
    .build();

// Start the `MyCustomActivity` like any other activity.
context.startActivity(intent);

Custom Activity Layouts

By default, PdfActivity uses the R.layout.pspdf__pdf_activity as its layout file. Have a look at that file to see all the views PSPDFKit uses. You can use the file as a template for your custom layout. To specify the layout, provide its ID to the PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder#layout method. Usually, it also makes sense to subclass the PdfActivity so it can make use of the custom layout and the views you may add:

val config = PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder(context)
    .layout(R.layout.my_custom_layout)
    .build()
final PdfActivityConfiguration config =
    new PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder(context)
        .layout(R.layout.my_custom_layout)
        .build();

Required Views

The PdfActivity expects several views to be present in the selected layout file. If any of the following views is missing, PSPDFKit will throw an InvalidLayoutException:

View ID Description
@id/pspdf__toolbar_coordinator A ToolbarCoordinatorLayout for managing and laying out the main toolbar (action bar) and contextual toolbars.
@id/pspdf__toolbar_main androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar serves as the activity’s action bar. This has to be wrapped inside the toolbar coordinator view.
@id/pspdf__inspector_coordinator PropertyInspectorCoordinatorLayout for managing and laying out the PropertyInspector views.
@id/pspdf__activity_fragment_container ViewGroup or any subclass. The activity will use this to inject the PdfFragment.
@id/pspdf__activity_form_editing_bar FormEditingBar serves as the helper toolbar for filling out interactive forms. This is not required when form editing is disabled.

Optional Views

In addition to the mandatory views, the layout may define several optional views. These views may be removed from the original layout. However, if this is done, they need to be deactivated explicitly using the PdfActivityConfiguration.Builder:

View ID Description
@id/pspdf__activity_thumbnail_bar The PdfThumbnailBar for displaying a horizontal list of thumbnails that show the current page.
@id/pspdf__activity_page_overlay A TextView for displaying the current page and total page count (e.g. Page 4 of 22).
@id/pspdf__activity_thumbnail_grid The PdfThumbnailGrid is a scrollable fullscreen grid of all the pages.
@id/pspdf__activity_search_view_modular A PdfSearchViewModular for displaying a search box and a list of search results.
 @id/pspdf__activity_outline_view The PdfOutlineView, which displays the document outline (table of contents) and a list of all annotations on the document.
@id/pspdf__navigate_back and @id/pspdf__navigate_forward CardViews that display the buttons for navigating back and forward.
@id/pspdf__activity_title_overlay A TextView for displaying the current document’s title.
@id/pspdf__activity_tab_bar The PdfTabBar for displaying a horizontal list of document tabs.