How to integrate and test OCR API in two minutes (video)
OCR-IT API will provide you with powerful capabilities to convert images to highly accurate text data. It is currently used in numerous mobile applications, desktop software, and enterprise solutions. Now you can use it, too.
First, open a free OCR API development account by visiting ocr-it.com.
Click on a big red “SIGN UP NOW” button to open a new account, or LOGIN link to access your existing account. Once the account is open, you are ready to start you development and testing.
Next, write your code or use your testing environment to create an OCR-IT API request via a Web call. For this testing, we will use Fiddler, a free Web monitoring utility.
Your request will consist of only three easy parts:
Request URL
This is a special URL to which you will submit your OCR requests. It contains your Secret Key. Both the submit URL and you Secret key can be found in your OCR-IT account.
Header
Make sure you are creating a POST request, and your header contains the appropriate header information.
Request Body
The body should contain XML with your request specifics. It can be very minimal as only the image URL being submitted for OCR is required. All other settings will be used as default. Or it may contain other settings in case you prefer to overwrite any default values, such as OCR language or other parameters.
This XML is provided in the API Documentation, accessible through the OCR-IT website, and here:
<Job>
<InputURL>http://www.ocr-it.com/samples/english_text_120dpi_bw.jpg</InputURL>
<CleanupSettings>
<Deskew>true</Deskew>
<RemoveGarbage>true</RemoveGarbage>
<RemoveTexture>true</RemoveTexture>
<RotationType>Automatic</RotationType>
</CleanupSettings>
<OCRSettings>
<PrintType>Print</PrintType>
<OCRLanguage>English</OCRLanguage>
<SpeedOCR>false</SpeedOCR>
<AnalysisMode>MixedDocument</AnalysisMode>
<LookForBarcodes>true</LookForBarcodes>
</OCRSettings>
<OutputSettings>
<ExportFormat>Text</ExportFormat>
</OutputSettings>
</Job>
That’s it! You are ready to submit your request. Execute!
OCR-IT web service will respond with HTTP 200, indicating successful submission. Within that response, a Job URL will be provided. This handle will provide you with access to your submission details. For testing purposes, you can use any browser to see the returned XML file.
The Job URL will contain a status, ranging from Submitted, Processing, Finished, or Failed if there was some issue. When the status reaches Finished, the result of the OCR, the text from your images, will be also provided to you in a separate URL. If you requested multiple output formats, they all will be listed in the same response.
For testing, the result of the OCR can be viewed in any browser.
This completes your image-to-text conversion process test.
When developing your application using OCR-IT API web calls, the steps are the same as documented in this process.
If you encounter any issues, or have any questions, please reach out to your friendly OCR-IT support team for any further assistance.
Happy OCR-ing.
