Components to be used to to download and open PDF and images

MIT App Inventor Help
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Hi there,

I'm building an app for Android which will be published on google play and have invested a lot of days trying to understand how to download a file and open it, which seems to be a simple operation on Windows but quite difficult on Android due to its security restrictions.

I need to do the following:

  1. Download a ZIP file from an HTTP server and unzip it. There will be one button for each file and customers will click it and the file will be displayed in full screen in the original format with the possibility to pinch the screen to zoom in and out.

  2. Download multiple image files (GIF and JPG) and display them in buttons' picture attribute and/or in image components.

I would prefer (not a requirement) to request the less permissions as possible and it will be targeted for different Android versions (I will test this on 7 and 12).

However I have been facing one problem after the other basically because the information is so confusing since the examples which were valid in the past are no longer valid in recent Android versions.

Would you be so kind to let me know which components should I use to accomplish this task?

I've noted the following extensions but perhaps are not the correct ones:

Taifun's ZIP
Taifun's FILE
Anke's Download2ASD
MetricRat'2 ViewPDF

Thanks in advance!

2

You will need Taifun's ZIP extension

There are several PDF viewer extensions available, depending on your requirements (FREE and PAID). (Although you could not download them and display them directly from the server in your browser / webviewer)

You don't necessarily need any extensions to download files to your app and display them.

You will need to show your relevant blocks to help explain the problems you have been getting.