How to share pdf and text through whatsapp in android?

Please note If your targetSdkVersion is 24 or higher, we have to use FileProvider class to give access to the particular file or folder to make them accessible for other apps.

Step 1: add a FileProvider tag in AndroidManifest.xml under application tag.

<provider
            android:name="android.support.v4.content.FileProvider"
            android:authorities="${applicationId}.provider"
            android:exported="false"
            android:grantUriPermissions="true">
            <meta-data
                android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
                android:resource="@xml/provider_paths"/>
        </provider>

Step 2:

then create a provider_paths.xml file in xml folder under res folder. Folder may be needed to create if it doesn't exist. The content of the file is shown below. It describes that we would like to share access to the External Storage at root folder (path=".") with the name external_files.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<paths xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <external-path name="external_files" path="."/>
</paths>

step 3: The final step is to change the line of code below in

Uri photoURI = Uri.fromFile(outputFile);

to

Uri uri = FileProvider.getUriForFile(PdfRendererActivity.this, PdfRendererActivity.this.getPackageName() + ".provider", outputFile);

step 4 (optional):

If using an intent to make the system open your file, you may need to add the following line of code:

intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION);

Hope this will help :)

I had this issue where I was trying to open a pdf file from assets folder and I did not work, but when I tried to open from Download folder (for example), it actually worked, and here is an example of it:

File outputFile = new File(Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory
    (Environment.DIRECTORY_DOWNLOADS), "example.pdf");
Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(outputFile);

Intent share = new Intent();
share.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
share.setType("application/pdf");
share.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri);
share.setPackage("com.whatsapp");

activity.startActivity(share);      

       if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
                pdfUri = FileProvider.getUriForFile(this, this.getPackageName() + ".provider", pdfFile);
            } else {
                pdfUri = Uri.fromFile(pdfFile);
            }
            Intent share = new Intent();
            share.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            share.setType("application/pdf");
            share.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, pdfUri);
            startActivity(Intent.createChooser(share, "Share"));

If you are using Intent.createChooser then always open chooser