@cboulanger/abbyy-cloud-ocr

Abbyy Cloud OCR client

This project provides a NodeJS client with TypeScript support and a command line interface (CLI) for the Abbyy Cloud OCR service (https://cloud.ocrsdk.com/). It currently implements a subset of the available API methods from the v1 and v2 web API:

• processDocument
• listTask/listFinishedTasks
• getApplicationInfo

Installation

To use the library in your projects, simply npm install @cboulanger/abbyy-cloud-ocr. See the CLI script for an example on how to use the API.

Testing

git clone https://github.com/cboulanger/cboulanger/abbyy-cloud-ocr.git
cd cboulanger/abbyy-cloud-ocr
cp .env.dist ./.env
# edit .env and provide the values needed there
npm install
npm test

Creating an executable

You can create a standalone command line executable file which can be run on the command line by executing npm run pkg. The executables for Linux/Windows/MacOS will be written to the bin directory.

Please note that if you have set environment variables in a .env file, the package include them and will be visible as plain text in the source! Please remove the file if you intend to distribute the built executable. The values will be used as defaults, which is convenient for personal use of the executable.

The usage of the executable is

Usage: abbyy-cloud-ocr-<platform> --help

Options:
  -u, --service-url <url>       The http endpoint of the Cloud OCR Service
  -i, --app-id <id>             The id of the application
  -P, --password <password>     The application password
  -h, --help                    display help for command

Commands:
  process [options] <files...>  Process the given files and download the results
  list [options]                List ongoing or finished tasks.
  info
  help [command]                display help for command

abbyy-cloud-ocr-<platform> process [options] file1 [file2 [file3]...] 
Process the given files and download the results

Options:
  -l, --language <language>       Recognition language or comma-separated list of languages, defaults to "English"
  -e, --export-format <format>    Output format. One of: txt (default), txtUnstructured, rtf, docx, xlsx, pptx, pdfa, pdfSearchable, pdfTextAndImages, xml
  -c, --custom-options <options>  Other custom options passed to REST-ful call,  like 'profile=documentArchiving'
  -o, --output-path <path>        The path to which to save the processed files
  -F, --filenames                 Output the filenames of the processed and downloaded files
  -h, --help                      display help for command

Note that if you don't compile in your .env file, you need to set the environment variables defined therein before calling the executable (or provide them on the command line).

The executable lets you do something like this:

# export credentials so that you don't need to provide them as CLI options 
export ABBYY_SERVICE_URL=XXXX
export ABBYY_APP_ID=YYYYYY
export ABBYY_APP_PASSWD=ZZZZZ

PAGES_BEFORE=$(abbyy-cloud-ocr info | jq ".pages")

abbyy-cloud-ocr process \
        -l German \
        -e docx,txtUnstructured \
        -c "txtUnstructured:paragraphAsOneLine=true" \
        -o ~/files/OCR \
        ~/files/PDF-SOURCE/*

PAGES_AFTER=$(abbyy-cloud-ocr info | jq ".pages")

echo "$(expr $PAGES_BEFORE - $PAGES_AFTER) pages used, $PAGES_AFTER left."