Node-RED nodes for doc.cheap: they read a photo or scan of a passport, national ID card or driving licence and return the printed fields – name, date of birth, document number, expiry, the machine-readable zone – as a message payload.

One recognised document costs one credit, $0.01. Registering gives 100 free documents every month. An unreadable image, an empty frame or an unsupported document type costs nothing, and every answer says whether it was billed.

Installation · Account · Nodes · Errors · Example · Resources · Version history

Installation

In the Node-RED editor: Menu → Manage palette → Install, then search for @doc-cheap/node-red-doc-cheap.

Or from your Node-RED user directory, usually ~/.node-red:

npm install @doc-cheap/node-red-doc-cheap

then restart Node-RED. The nodes appear in the doc.cheap palette category. They need Node-RED 3.0 or later and Node.js 18 or later, and have no runtime dependencies.

Account

Every node points at a doc-cheap-config node that holds the account:

API key – a live key (sk_live_…) from the doc.cheap cabinet, or the public sandbox key sk_sandbox_public to try the nodes without an account. The sandbox key gives 10 free recognised documents per address in all, and at most 10 requests per address an hour, whatever their answer. The key is sent as a Bearer token. Node-RED keeps it in its credentials file, so it never appears in the flow JSON or in an export.
Base URL – leave it at https://api.doc.cheap.

Nodes

A setting on the incoming message overrides the same setting in the node's dialog, so one node can serve messages that each ask for something different.

recognize

Sends an image to POST /v1/scans.

Input	Type	Meaning
`msg.payload`	Buffer or string	The image (JPEG or PNG): a Buffer, a base64 string, a `data:` URL, or an `http(s)` URL that the node downloads first. Images larger than 25 MiB are refused.
`msg.expectCountry`	string	Optional. The country you expect, a three-letter code such as `GRC`.
`msg.returnPortrait`	boolean	Optional. Whether to return the holder's photo crop.
`msg.retainHours`	number	Optional. How many hours the result can be read back, 0 to 8760. Empty uses the account's setting.
`msg.reference`	string	Optional. Your own reference, up to 128 characters, echoed back.
`msg.idempotencyKey`	string	Optional. Sent as the `Idempotency-Key` header: sending the same key again returns the first answer instead of charging a second scan.

Output: msg.payload is the scan result – meta (id, status, whether it was billed, confidence), the document, the per-field readings, the machine-readable zone and the image crops.

get scan

Reads back a stored result with GET /v1/scans/{id}. The id comes from the node's Scan id, then msg.scanId, then a string msg.payload. Output: msg.payload is the stored scan result.

delete scan

Deletes a stored result for good with DELETE /v1/scans/{id}. The id is read the same way as in get scan. Output: msg.payload is { id, deleted: true }.

usage

Reads GET /v1/usage: this month's free credits, the paid credits, the credits spent and this period's scan counters. Any message starts it. With the public sandbox key there is no account behind the call, so the balance comes back empty.

Stored results. A result is stored only when the scan was made with a live key under a non-zero retention window, and only until that window ends. Under a sandbox key nothing is stored, so get scan and delete scan answer "not found". None of get scan, delete scan or usage charges a credit.

Errors

A failed request raises a node error that a Catch node receives, turns the node's status dot red and sets msg.error to { status, code, message }: status is the HTTP status (or null when no answer came back) and code is the API's error code.

401 / 403 – the API key was refused.
429 – the rate limit was reached: try later. The key itself is fine.
404 – the scan does not exist, or was never stored.
No answer – doc.cheap could not be reached (code network_error).
Download failed – the image URL could not be downloaded (code download_failed).

The dot is yellow while a request runs and green when it succeeded.

Example

Menu → Import → Examples → @doc-cheap/node-red-doc-cheap holds a flow with one inject → node → debug row for each operation. It carries no API key: open the doc.cheap account node, enter your key, and replace the example image URL and scan id with your own.