Detect Text in Document with AWS Textract (Synchronous)

This function calls the AWS Textract DetectDocumentText API (synchronous) to extract plain text from documents. This is faster than AnalyzeDocument but doesn't extract structured data like forms or tables. Note: This is a synchronous operation with a 5 MB file size limit. For larger files, the function automatically converts the first 2 pages to PNG format.

Usage

textract_detect_document_text(
  file_path,
  aws_access_key_id,
  aws_secret_access_key,
  aws_region = "us-east-1"
)

Arguments

file_path

Character string. Path to a local PDF, PNG, JPEG, or TIFF file.

aws_access_key_id

Character string. AWS access key ID.

aws_secret_access_key

Character string. AWS secret access key.

aws_region

Character string. AWS region. Default is "us-east-1".

Value

List containing the raw Textract API response with Blocks.

Warning

This function uses the synchronous Textract API which has a 5 MB file size limit. For PDFs larger than 5 MB, only the first 2 pages will be automatically extracted and converted to PNG format. For full document processing of large files, consider using the asynchronous S3-based Textract workflow or an alternative service like Google Document AI (20 MB limit) or Azure Document Intelligence (500 MB limit).

Author

Nathan C. Layman