PaddleOCR Document Parsing

Parse images and PDF files using PaddleOCR's API. Supports both synchronous and asynchronous parsing modes with structured output.

Resource Links

Resource	Link
Official Website	https://www.paddleocr.com
API Documentation	https://ai.baidu.com/ai-doc/AISTUDIO/Cmkz2m0ma
GitHub	https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR

Key Features

• Multi-format support: PDF and image files (JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF)
• Two parsing modes:
  • Sync mode: Fast response for small files (<600s timeout)
  • Async mode: For large files with progress polling
• Layout analysis: Automatic detection of text blocks, tables, formulas
• Multi-language: Support for 110+ languages
• Structured output: Markdown format with preserved document structure

Setup

1. Visit PaddleOCR to obtain your API credentials
2. Set environment variables:

export PADDLEOCR_ACCESS_TOKEN="your_token_here"
export PADDLEOCR_API_URL="https://your-endpoint.aistudio-app.com/layout-parsing"

# Optional: For async mode
export PADDLEOCR_JOB_URL="https://your-job-endpoint.aistudio-app.com/api/v2/ocr/jobs"
export PADDLEOCR_MODEL="PaddleOCR-VL-1.5"

Usage Examples

Sync Mode (Default)

For small files and quick processing:

# Parse local image
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh document.jpg

# Parse PDF
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh -t pdf document.pdf

# Parse from URL
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh https://example.com/document.jpg

# Save output to file
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh -o result.json document.jpg

# Verbose output
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh -v document.jpg

Async Mode

For large files with progress tracking:

# Parse large PDF with async mode
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh --async large-document.pdf

# Parse from URL with async mode
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh --async -t pdf https://example.com/doc.pdf

# Save async result to file
{baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.sh --async -o result.json document.pdf

Using Python Script Directly

# Sync mode
python3 {baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.py document.jpg

# Async mode
python3 {baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.py --async-mode document.pdf

# With output file
python3 {baseDir}/paddleocr_parse.py -o result.json --async-mode document.pdf

Response Structure

{
  "logId": "unique_request_id",
  "errorCode": 0,
  "errorMsg": "Success",
  "result": {
    "layoutParsingResults": [
      {
        "prunedResult": [...],
        "markdown": {
          "text": "# Document Title\n\nParagraph content...",
          "images": {}
        },
        "outputImages": [...],
        "inputImage": "http://input-image"
      }
    ],
    "dataInfo": {...}
  }
}

Important Fields:

• prunedResult - Contains detailed layout element information including positions, categories, etc.
• markdown - Stores the document content converted to Markdown format with preserved structure and formatting.

Mode Selection Guide

Use Case	Recommended Mode
Small images (< 10MB)	Sync
Single page PDFs	Sync
Large PDFs (> 10MB)	Async
Multi-page documents	Async
Batch processing	Async
Quick text extraction	Sync

Error Handling

The script will exit with code 1 and print error message for:

• Missing required environment variables
• File not found
• API authentication failures
• Invalid JSON responses
• API error codes (non-zero)

Quota Information

See official documentation: https://ai.baidu.com/ai-doc/AISTUDIO/Xmjclapam