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.
🔍 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.
- What it does: Extract plain text from a PDF file.
- How: Again, use PDF.js to parse pages and extract text content.
- 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).
- 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.
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()
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!