PDFForge

PDFForge is a powerful, self-hostable, and completely free open-source PDF toolkit. Forget vendor lock-in, uploading sensitive documents to third-party servers, and expensive subscriptions. PDFForge brings 25+ PDF manipulation tools directly to your infrastructure.

Features

• Merge & Split: Combine multiple PDFs or extract exact page ranges.
• Compress: Drastically reduce PDF file sizes while maintaining quality.
• Convert: Transform PDFs to Word, Excel, Images, Text, and vice-versa.
• Security: Encrypt with AES-256, unlock documents, and permanently redact sensitive information.
• Edit: Rotate pages, add watermarks, sign documents, edit metadata, and repair corrupted files.
• 100% Private: Your files never leave your server. Auto-cleanup ensures files are deleted instantly upon completion.
• Asynchronous Processing: Built on Celery and Redis to handle massive files without blocking.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 14, React, TailwindCSS, Framer Motion, Zustand
• Backend: FastAPI, Python 3.11, PyMuPDF, Celery
• Infrastructure: Docker, Docker Compose, Redis, Nginx

Deployment

PDFForge can be deployed in two primary ways:

1. Offline / Local (Self-Hosted via Docker)

This is the recommended way for maximum privacy.

# Clone and enter repo
git clone https://github.com/Navaneeth223/PDFforge.git && cd PDFforge

# Start everything
docker-compose up -d --build

Access at http://localhost.

2. Online / Cloud (Vercel + Render)

For hosting on the web with a live URL:

Backend (Render)

1. Fork this repository.
2. Connect your GitHub to Render.
3. Click New + > Blueprint.
4. Select the render.yaml file from your repo.
5. Set ALLOWED_ORIGINS to your future Vercel URL.
6. Render will automatically deploy the API, Celery Worker, and Redis.

Frontend (Vercel)

1. Connect your GitHub to Vercel.
2. Select the frontend directory.
3. Set Environment Variable: NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL to your Render API URL.
4. Deploy.

manual Development Setup

If you wish to run the services manually without Docker:

Backend

1. Install Python 3.11+.
2. Install system dependencies: tesseract-ocr, libreoffice, weasyprint.
3. Setup virtual environment:

   cd backend
   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # or venv\Scripts\activate on Windows
   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Start Redis server locally.
5. Start the FastAPI server:

   uvicorn main:app --reload --port 8000

6. Start the Celery Worker (in a new terminal):

   celery -A services.job_queue worker --loglevel=info

Frontend

1. Install Node.js 18+.
2. Install dependencies:

   cd frontend
   npm install

3. Start the Next.js development server:

   npm run dev

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's adding a new tool, improving the UI, or fixing bugs, please open an issue or submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.