APIExample

API examples

This wiki provide simple example how to use tesseract-ocr API (v3.02.02) in C++. It is expected that tesseract-ocr is correctly installed including all dependecies. It is expected that user is familiar with C++, compiling and linking program on their platform, though basic compilation examples are included for beginners with Linux.

More details about tesseract-ocr API can found at baseapi.h

Basic example

Code:

#include <tesseract/baseapi.h>
#include <leptonica/allheaders.h>

int main()
{
    char *outText;

    tesseract::TessBaseAPI *api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
    // Initialize tesseract-ocr with English, without specifying tessdata path
    if (api->Init(NULL, "eng")) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Could not initialize tesseract.\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    // Open input image with leptonica library
    Pix *image = pixRead("/usr/src/tesseract/testing/phototest.tif");
    api->SetImage(image);
    // Get OCR result
    outText = api->GetUTF8Text();
    printf("OCR output:\n%s", outText);

    // Destroy used object and release memory
    api->End();
    delete [] outText;
    pixDestroy(&image);

    return 0;
}

Program must be linked to tesseract-ocr library and leptonica library.

If you want to restrict recognition to a sub-rectangle of the image - call SetRectangle(left, top, width, height) after SetImage. Each SetRectangle clears the recogntion results so multiple rectangles can be recognized with the same image. E.g.

  api->SetRectangle(30, 86, 590, 100);

GetComponentImages example

  Pix *image = pixRead("/usr/src/tesseract/testing/phototest.tif");
  tesseract::TessBaseAPI *api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
  api->Init(NULL, "eng");
  api->SetImage(image);
  Boxa* boxes = api->GetComponentImages(tesseract::RIL_TEXTLINE, true, NULL, NULL);
  printf("Found %d textline image components.\n", boxes->n);
  for (int i = 0; i < boxes->n; i++) {
    BOX* box = boxaGetBox(boxes, i, L_CLONE);
    api->SetRectangle(box->x, box->y, box->w, box->h);
    char* ocrResult = api->GetUTF8Text();
    int conf = api->MeanTextConf();
    fprintf(stdout, "Box[%d]: x=%d, y=%d, w=%d, h=%d, confidence: %d, text: %s",
                    i, box->x, box->y, box->w, box->h, conf, ocrResult);
  }

Result iterator example

There is possibility to get confidence value and BoundingBox per word from ResultIterator:

  Pix *image = pixRead("/usr/src/tesseract/testing/phototest.tif");
  tesseract::TessBaseAPI *api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
  api->Init(NULL, "eng");
  api->SetImage(image);
  api->Recognize(0);
  tesseract::ResultIterator* ri = api->GetIterator();
  tesseract::PageIteratorLevel level = tesseract::RIL_WORD;
  if (ri != 0) {
    do {
      const char* word = ri->GetUTF8Text(level);
      float conf = ri->Confidence(level);
      int x1, y1, x2, y2;
      ri->BoundingBox(level, &x1, &y1, &x2, &y2);
      printf("word: '%s';  \tconf: %.2f; BoundingBox: %d,%d,%d,%d;\n",
               word, conf, x1, y1, x2, y2);
      delete[] word;
    } while (ri->Next(level));
  }

Of course there is possibility to use other PageiteratorLevel.

Orientation and script detection (OSD) example

  const char* inputfile = "/usr/src/tesseract/testing/eurotext.tif";
  tesseract::Orientation orientation;
  tesseract::WritingDirection direction;
  tesseract::TextlineOrder order;
  float deskew_angle;

  PIX *image = pixRead(inputfile);
  tesseract::TessBaseAPI *api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
  api->Init("/usr/src/tesseract/", "eng");
  api->SetPageSegMode(tesseract::PSM_AUTO_OSD);
  api->SetImage(image);
  api->Recognize(0);

  tesseract::PageIterator* it =  api->AnalyseLayout();
  it->Orientation(&orientation, &direction, &order, &deskew_angle);
  printf("Orientation: %d;\nWritingDirection: %d\nTextlineOrder: %d\n" \
         "Deskew angle: %.4f\n",
         orientation, direction, order, deskew_angle);

Explanation for result codes are in publictypes.h

Example of iterator over the classifier choices for a single symbol

  Pix *image = pixRead("/usr/src/tesseract/testing/phototest.tif");
  tesseract::TessBaseAPI *api = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
  api->Init(NULL, "eng");
  api->SetImage(image);
  api->SetVariable("save_blob_choices", "T");
  api->SetRectangle(37, 228, 548, 31);
  api->Recognize(NULL);

  tesseract::ResultIterator* ri = api->GetIterator();
  tesseract::PageIteratorLevel level = tesseract::RIL_SYMBOL;
  if(ri != 0) {
      do {
          const char* symbol = ri->GetUTF8Text(level);
          float conf = ri->Confidence(level);
          if(symbol != 0) {
              printf("symbol %s, conf: %f", symbol, conf);
              bool indent = false;
              tesseract::ChoiceIterator ci(*ri);
              do {
                  if (indent) printf("\t\t ");
                  printf("\t- ");
                  const char* choice = ci.GetUTF8Text();
                  printf("%s conf: %f\n", choice, ci.Confidence());
                  indent = true;
              } while(ci.Next());
          }
          printf("---------------------------------------------\n");
          delete[] symbol;
      } while((ri->Next(level)));
  }

Compiling C++ API programs on Linux

Including and linking to Tesseract's API is done in a standard Linux way. To compile a basic program against the API, you can use a command like this:

g++ -o myprogram myprogram.cpp -llept -ltesseract

If Tesseract is installed in an unusual place, you can specify the include and lib directories explicitly with g++'s -I and -L flags, like this:

g++ -o myprogram myprogram.cpp -I/home/nick/local/include/tesseract -L/home/nick/local/lib -llept -ltesseract

C-API in python

Tesseract-ocr from version 3.02.02 provide C-API. This enable to use tesseract-ocr shared library in python (and other languages that can use C libraries):

import os
import ctypes

lang = "eng"
filename = "/usr/src/tesseract-ocr/phototest.tif"
libname = "/usr/local/lib64/libtesseract.so.3"
TESSDATA_PREFIX = os.environ.get('TESSDATA_PREFIX')
if not TESSDATA_PREFIX:
    TESSDATA_PREFIX = "../"

tesseract = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(libname)
tesseract.TessVersion.restype = ctypes.c_char_p
tesseract_version = tesseract.TessVersion()
api = tesseract.TessBaseAPICreate()
rc = tesseract.TessBaseAPIInit3(api, TESSDATA_PREFIX, lang)
if (rc):
    tesseract.TessBaseAPIDelete(api)
    print("Could not initialize tesseract.\n")
    exit(3)

text_out = tesseract.TessBaseAPIProcessPages(api, filename, None, 0)
result_text = ctypes.string_at(text_out)

print 'Tesseract-ocr version', tesseract_version
print result_text

Example of passing python file object to C-API can be found at pastebin.

Example of extracting orientation from Tesseract 4.0:

# /usr/bin/env python3
# coding: utf-8

PATH_TO_LIBTESS = '/path/to/development/libtesseract.so'

import cffi  # requires "pip install cffi"

ffi = cffi.FFI()
ffi.cdef("""
struct Pix;
typedef struct Pix PIX;
PIX * pixRead ( const char *filename );
char * getLeptonicaVersion (  );

typedef struct TessBaseAPI TessBaseAPI;
typedef int BOOL;

const char* TessVersion();

TessBaseAPI* TessBaseAPICreate();
int TessBaseAPIInit3(TessBaseAPI* handle, const char* datapath, const char* language);

void TessBaseAPISetImage2(TessBaseAPI* handle, struct Pix* pix);

BOOL   TessBaseAPIDetectOrientationScript(TessBaseAPI* handle, char** best_script_name, 
                                                            int* best_orientation_deg, float* script_confidence, 
                                                            float* orientation_confidence);
""")

libtess = ffi.dlopen(PATH_TO_LIBTESS)
from ctypes.util import find_library
liblept = ffi.dlopen(find_library('lept'))

ffi.string(libtess.TessVersion())

ffi.string(liblept.getLeptonicaVersion())

api = libtess.TessBaseAPICreate()

libtess.TessBaseAPIInit3(api, ffi.NULL, ffi.NULL)

pix = liblept.pixRead('mono.png'.encode())

libtess.TessBaseAPISetImage2(api, pix)

script_name = ffi.new('char **')
orient_deg = ffi.new('int *')
script_conf = ffi.new('float *')
orient_conf = ffi.new('float *')
libtess.TessBaseAPIDetectOrientationScript(api, script_name, orient_deg, script_conf, orient_conf)

ffi.string(script_name[0])

print(orient_deg[0])
print(script_conf[0])
print(orient_conf[0])

Example using the C-API in a C program

The C-API can of course also be used by regular C programs, as in this very basic example.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <allheaders.h>
#include <capi.h>

void die(const char *errstr) {
	fputs(errstr, stderr);
	exit(1);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
	TessBaseAPI *handle;
	PIX *img;
	char *text;

	if((img = pixRead("img.png")) == NULL)
		die("Error reading image\n");

	handle = TessBaseAPICreate();
	if(TessBaseAPIInit3(handle, NULL, "eng") != 0)
		die("Error initialising tesseract\n");

	TessBaseAPISetImage2(handle, img);
	if(TessBaseAPIRecognize(handle, NULL) != 0)
		die("Error in Tesseract recognition\n");

	if((text = TessBaseAPIGetUTF8Text(handle)) == NULL)
		die("Error getting text\n");

	fputs(text, stdout);

	TessDeleteText(text);
	TessBaseAPIEnd(handle);
	TessBaseAPIDelete(handle);
	pixDestroy(&img);

	return 0;
}

On Linux you can compile it as you would build a program using the C++ API.