⛔️ NO LONGER MAINTAINED ⛔️

This plugin was originally built back in 2013 to provide an easy way to open files in Cordova applications. Since 2018 the plugin has not been actively maintained, with only the occaisional release to support updates from the community. Due to signficant changes in the way that Android handles permissions from version 11 onwards, this plugin does not work with Android 11 or later and would require significant changes to make this happen.

If someone would like to take on this work and maintain the plugin moving forward please get in touch.

A File Opener Plugin for Cordova

This plugin will open a file on your device file system with its default application.

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.open(
    filePath,
    fileMIMEType,
    {
        error : function(){ },
        success : function(){ }
    }
);

Installation

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-file-opener2

Requirements

The following platforms and versions are supported by the latest release:

• Android 5.1+ / iOS 9+ / Windows / Electron
• Cordova CLI 7.0 or higher

Cordova CLI 6.0 is supported by 2.0.19, but there are a number of issues, particularly with Android builds (see 232 203 207). Using the cordova-android-support-gradle-release plugin may help.

Support for Android 11 and later

There have been reports of issues using this plugin with Android 11 and later.

Edit support

The plugin currently does not support the editing of files on Android. It may support editing on iOS, but this has not been tested.

fileOpener2.open(filePath, mimeType, options)

Opens a file

Supported Platforms

• Android 5.1+
• iOS 9+
• Windows
• Electron

Quick Examples

Open an APK install dialog:

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.open(
    '/Downloads/gmail.apk',
    'application/vnd.android.package-archive'
);

Open a PDF document with the default PDF reader and optional callback object:

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.open(
    '/Download/starwars.pdf', // You can also use a Cordova-style file uri: cdvfile://localhost/persistent/Downloads/starwars.pdf
    'application/pdf',
    {
        error : function(e) {
            console.log('Error status: ' + e.status + ' - Error message: ' + e.message);
        },
        success : function () {
            console.log('file opened successfully');
        }
    }
);

Note on Electron: Do not forget to enable Node.js in your app by adding "nodeIntegration": true to platforms/electron/platform_www/cdv-electron-settings.json file, See Cordova-Electron documentation.

Market place installation

Install From Market: to install an APK from a market place, such as Google Play or the App Store, you can use an <a> tag in combination with the market:// protocol:

<a href="market://details?id=xxxx" target="_system">Install from Google Play</a>
<a href="itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/app/my-app/idxxxxxxxx?mt=8" target="_system">Install from App Store</a>

or in code:

window.open("[market:// or itms-apps:// link]","_system");

fileOpener2.showOpenWithDialog(filePath, mimeType, options)

Opens with system modal to open file with an already installed app.

Supported Platforms

• Android 5.1+
• iOS 9+

Quick Example

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.showOpenWithDialog(
    '/Downloads/starwars.pdf', // You can also use a Cordova-style file uri: cdvfile://localhost/persistent/Downloads/starwars.pdf
    'application/pdf',
    {
        error : function(e) {
            console.log('Error status: ' + e.status + ' - Error message: ' + e.message);
        },
        success : function () {
            console.log('file opened successfully');
        },
        position : [0, 0]
    }
);

position array of coordinates from top-left device screen, use for iOS dialog positioning.

fileOpener2.uninstall(packageId, callbackContext)

Uninstall a package with its ID.

Note: You need to add <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_DELETE_PACKAGES" /> to your AndroidManifest.xml

Supported Platforms

• Android 5.1+

Quick Example

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.uninstall('com.zynga.FarmVille2CountryEscape', {
    error : function(e) {
        console.log('Error status: ' + e.status + ' - Error message: ' + e.message);
    },
    success : function() {
        console.log('Uninstall intent activity started.');
    }
});

fileOpener2.appIsInstalled(packageId, callbackContext)

Check if an app is already installed.

Supported Platforms

• Android 5.1+

Quick Example

cordova.plugins.fileOpener2.appIsInstalled('com.adobe.reader', {
    success : function(res) {
        if (res.status === 0) {
            console.log('Adobe Reader is not installed.');
        } else {
            console.log('Adobe Reader is installed.')
        }
    }
});

Android APK installation limitation

The following limitations apply when opening an APK file for installation:

• On Android 8+, your application must have the ACTION_INSTALL_PACKAGE permission. You can add it by adding this to your app's config.xml file:

<platform name="android">
    <config-file parent="/manifest" target="AndroidManifest.xml" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
        <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />
    </config-file>
</platform>

• Before Android 7, you can only install APKs from the "external" partition. For example, you can install from cordova.file.externalDataDirectory, but not from cordova.file.dataDirectory. Android 7+ does not have this limitation.

SD card limitation on Android

It is not always possible to open a file from the SD Card using this plugin on Android. This is because the underlying Android library used does not support serving files from secondary external storage devices. Whether or not your the SD card is treated as a secondary external device depends on your particular phone's set up.

Notes

• For properly opening any file, you must already have a suitable reader for that particular file type installed on your device. Otherwise this will not work.

• It is reported that in iOS, you might need to remove <preference name="iosPersistentFileLocation" value="Library" /> from your config.xml

• If you are wondering what MIME-type should you pass as the second argument to open function, here is a list of all known MIME-types