How to Build an Android App for Document Collaboration with PDFTron SDK

How to Build an Android App for Document Collaboration with PDFTron SDK
By: Jayasankar P M, Senior Software Engineer, RapidValue

Integrating PDFTron Android SDK – Getting Started!
Pre-requisites:
• Android Studio
• Project specifications:
Minimum API: 16 (using AndroidX)
Compile API: 29
Recommended target API: 29
If your app is using AndroidX, you will also need to add android.useAndroidX=true and
android.useAndroidX=true in your gradle.properties file. You can learn more about this
here.
• A valid license key
Steps:
This section will go through each component that is required to build your real-time
document collaboration app. This includes:
1. Add Firebase to Your Android Project
Firebase has a very comprehensive tutorial on how to add Firebase to your Android
project. Head here to get your project set up. Option 1 Add Firebase using the Firebase
console is recommended. By the end of this step, your Firebase project console will
recognize your Android app.
Next, let's add two additional packages: Firebase Authentication and Firebase
Realtime Database. In your app module's build.gradle file (usually app/build.gradle),
add the following:
2. Add PDFTron Android SDK to your Android project
© RapidValue Solutions 2

You can either integrate PDFTron packages automatically using Gradle, or install them
manually using .aar files by downloading the SDK.
Open the build.gradle file in your project's root directory:
Edit it to include the following inside the allprojects.repositories section to include
PDFTron's Maven repository:
Open the build.gradle file in your module directory:
Edit it to include the following dependencies to your project.

In your project's root directory, find the gradle.properties file. Copy the following line to
it.
Open your AndroidManifest.xml file and add a <metadata> tag inside the <application>
tag to be a placeholder for the license key:

3. Convert MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to PDF
To convert an MS Office file to a PDF document without any external third party
dependencies.

4. Preview PDF
This section will show you how to open a document in a DocumentActivity. This is an
AppCompatActivity which contains a PdfViewCtrlTabHostFragment and packages all
the standard features used during document viewing
The AndroidManifest.xml file needs to be updated to request permissions to allow
DocumentActivity to function properly. You also need to add some attributes to the
<application> tag as well as a new <activity> tag to define the DocumentActivity.

5. Handling Incoming Annotation Data from the Server
Authentication
First, go to the Firebase console and click the "Authentication" button on the left panel
and then click the "Sign-in Method" tab, just to the right of "Users". From this page click
the "Anonymous" button and choose to enable anonymous login.

Annotation Data Flow
After successfully authenticating the user and having obtained a user name, let's add
the user to the Firebase database and start subscribing to database changes.

6. Sending Client Annotation Data to the Server
Next, let's add functionality to send client annotation changes to Firebase. PDFTron
stores your annotations in XFDF -- the ISO Standard Format for annotations
interchange -- which means your annotations can be preserved when sharing
documents with people using other tools. Code is as follows:

7. Add the Collaboration Viewer
You can now connect your server to the PDFTron SDK's out-of-box collaboration UI, in
your MainActivity.kt:

Customize a Document Viewer
PDFTron includes DocumentActivity and PdfViewCtrlTabHostFragment for showing
documents. To customize their appearance and function, see Customizing a document
viewer.
PDFTron also includes a low-level ViewGroup (PDFViewCtrl) to show documents. If you
are using it, please see Customizing a PDFViewCtrl.
New Document Viewer UI (Beta)
Version 7.1.5 of PDFTron's Android PDF SDK release includes a brand new viewer
PdfViewCtrlTabHostFragment2 which includes an updated user interface containing:
improvements to the annotation toolbar, a better multi-tab navigation experience,
improvements to stamp and signature flows, and more.
Conclusion
PDFTron SDK is an advanced framework for displaying and annotating PDFs on
Android. It brings a new collaborative document viewing experience to Android, making
use of PDFTron's powerful document viewing and editing features. PDFTron SDK is

very straight forward, the interface is very easy to understand and all the features it
offers are simple. Using the PDFTron APIs and a server, you can set up real time
collaboration easily. It lets the users collaborate on documents across all platforms:
Web, Android, iOS, Windows & more. With PDFTron SDK, you can quickly provide
document collaboration on 30+ file types in your application. PDFTron has a relatively
stronger mobile platform when compared to the key competitors.
If you’re an Android developer and looking forward to learn how to integrate PDFTron
SDK in an Android Application, this article will help you how to do it right. Hope you find
it as easy to use.
Reference: https://www.pdftron.com/documentation/android/

About RapidValue
RapidValue is a global leader in digital product engineering solutions including
mobility, omnichannel, IoT, AI, RPA and cloud to enterprises worldwide.
RapidValue offers its digital services to the world’s top brands, Fortune 1000
companies and innovative emerging start-ups. With offices in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Germany and India and operations spread across the
Middle-East, Europe and Canada, RapidValue delivers enterprise services and
solutions across various industry verticals.
Disclaimer:
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