How to Load Local PDF in UIWebView in Swift

So I am currently trying to display a local PDF I have in UIWebview and this is the code I'm using:

@IBOutlet weak var webView:UIWebView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()    

var pdfLoc = NSURL(fileURLWithPath:NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("Sample", ofType:"pdf")!) 
var request = NSURLRequest(URL: pdfLoc);
self.webView.loadRequest(request);
}

The code will successfully build, but when I run the app, it will crash with the error: Thread 1: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION(code=EXC-I386_INVOP,subcode=0x0)

I have found a few tutorials on how to do this, but they are all very outdated or in Objective-C.

Solution 1:

Here you go:

if let pdf = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("myPDF", withExtension: "pdf", subdirectory: nil, localization: nil)  {
            let req = NSURLRequest(URL: pdf)
            let webView = UIWebView(frame: CGRectMake(20,20,self.view.frame.size.width-40,self.view.frame.size.height-40))
            webView.loadRequest(req)
            self.view.addSubview(webView)
        }

Edit

The alternative is via NSData:

if let pdfURL = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("myPDF", withExtension: "pdf", subdirectory: nil, localization: nil),data = NSData(contentsOfURL: pdfURL), baseURL = pdfURL.URLByDeletingLastPathComponent  {
    let webView = UIWebView(frame: CGRectMake(20,20,self.view.frame.size.width-40,self.view.frame.size.height-40))
    webView.loadData(data, MIMEType: "application/pdf", textEncodingName:"", baseURL: baseURL)
    self.view.addSubview(webView)
}

Apple make a point of advising you to not use .loadRequest for local HTML files, while not clearly extending this to other data types. So I've provided the NSData route above. If you wish to specify a textEncodingName it can be "utf-8", "utf-16", etc.

Edit: Swift 3

Here's a Swift 3 version of the code using, as Apple advise, WKWebView in place of UIWebView.

import UIKit
import WebKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.

        if let pdfURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "myPDF", withExtension: "pdf", subdirectory: nil, localization: nil)  {
            do {
                let data = try Data(contentsOf: pdfURL)
                let webView = WKWebView(frame: CGRect(x:20,y:20,width:view.frame.size.width-40, height:view.frame.size.height-40))
                webView.load(data, mimeType: "application/pdf", characterEncodingName:"", baseURL: pdfURL.deletingLastPathComponent())
               view.addSubview(webView)

            }
            catch {
                // catch errors here
            }

        }
    }

}

Accessing the PDF from Asset.xcassets (Swift 4)

if let asset = NSDataAsset(name: "myPDF") {
            let url = Bundle.main.bundleURL
            let webView = WKWebView(frame: CGRect(x:20,y:20,width:view.frame.size.width-40, height:view.frame.size.height-40))
            webView.load(asset.data, mimeType: "application/pdf", characterEncodingName:"", baseURL:url)
            view.addSubview(webView)
       }

Solution 2:

Updated for Swift 3

import UIKit
import WebKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    let webView = WKWebView()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        loadPdf()
        setupViews()
    }

    func loadPdf() {

        if let pdfUrl = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "YourPdfFileName", withExtension: "pdf", subdirectory: nil, localization: nil) {

            do {
                let data = try Data(contentsOf: pdfUrl)
                webView.load(data, mimeType: "application/pdf", characterEncodingName:"", baseURL: pdfUrl.deletingLastPathComponent())
                print("pdf file loading...")
            }
            catch {
                print("failed to open pdf")
            }
            return
        }

        print("pdf file doesn't exist")
    }

    func setupViews() {

        title = "View PDF Demo"
        view.backgroundColor = .white
        view.addSubview(webView)

        // setup AutoLayout...
        webView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        webView.leftAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leftAnchor).isActive = true
        webView.rightAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.rightAnchor).isActive = true
        webView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.topAnchor).isActive = true
        webView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.bottomAnchor).isActive = true
    }
}

Solution 3:

import WebKit

here you can load your pdf in your application

 override func viewDidLoad() {
      super.viewDidLoad()
      // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.

      if let pdfURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "food-and-drink-menu-trafalgar-tavern", withExtension: "pdf", subdirectory: nil, localization: nil)  {
           do {
                let data = try Data(contentsOf: pdfURL)
                let webView = WKWebView(frame: CGRect(x:0,y:NavigationView.frame.size.height,width:view.frame.size.width, height:view.frame.size.height-NavigationView.frame.size.height))
                webView.load(data, mimeType: "application/pdf", characterEncodingName:"", baseURL: pdfURL.deletingLastPathComponent())
                view.addSubview(webView)

           }
           catch {
                // catch errors here
           }

      }
 }