PDF Tools in pure JavaScript

Here are several tools related to PDF files that you can build using pure JavaScript (vanilla JS) — no frameworks needed. Some may require the use of browser APIs or lightweight libraries (like PDF.js), but the logic/UI can still be built in plain JS.

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🧰 PDF Tools You Can Build with Pure JavaScript

🔍 1. PDF Viewer

• What it does: Displays the content of a PDF file.
• How: Use the PDF.js library from Mozilla (can be embedded without a framework).
• Enhancements: Zoom, next/prev page, search text.

✏️ 2. PDF Annotator

• What it does: Let users draw or add text on top of a PDF.
• How: Render PDF with canvas (via PDF.js), then overlay annotation layers (with HTML5 canvas or SVG).

📥 3. PDF Downloader from URL

• What it does: Input a PDF URL and download it to local device.
• How: Use fetch() to get the blob, and URL.createObjectURL() to trigger download.

📄 4. PDF to Text Extractor

• What it does: Extract plain text from a PDF file.
• How: Again, use PDF.js to parse pages and extract text content.

📊 5. PDF Metadata Reader

• What it does: Reads basic metadata (title, author, creation date).
• How: PDF.js or raw parsing (more advanced, but possible with ArrayBuffer and DataView).

🖼️ 6. PDF to Image (Pages Preview)

• What it does: Convert pages of a PDF to PNG or JPG images.
• How: Render each page with canvas and export via canvas.toDataURL().

🔐 7. Password-Protected PDF Checker

• What it does: Detects if a PDF is encrypted and prompts for a password.
• How: PDF.js has error handling for this (requires slight customization).

🗃️ 8. PDF Merger Tool (Basic)

• What it does: Combine multiple PDFs into one.
• How: Requires a bit more than pure JS in browser — but can be done using pdf-lib, a zero-dependency JS library that works in browser (no Node needed).

✂️ 9. PDF Splitter

• What it does: Select specific pages to extract into a new PDF.
• How: Use pdf-lib to manipulate the PDF and export selected pages.

📝 10. HTML to PDF Converter

• What it does: Convert a section of a webpage or content to PDF.
• How: Use window.print() (basic), or use html2canvas + jsPDF (both can be included via <script> tags).

🔄 11. Drag & Drop PDF Reader

• What it does: User drags a PDF file into the browser, and it renders/reads the content.
• How: Combine FileReader + PDF.js for seamless experience.

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✅ Tools Requiring ONLY Vanilla JS + Browser APIs:

These don't even need external libraries:

• PDF Downloader
• Drag & Drop Reader (basic file details)
• PDF Metadata Inspector (basic parsing)
• HTML to PDF via window.print()

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Want to Build One?

If you'd like, I can:

• Help you build a simple PDF reader tool from scratch.
• Give you a starter template for a PDF-to-text tool.
• Show how to extract all text from a PDF using JS in-browser.

Let me know which direction you'd like to go!