Create document (upload)

Create a new document and add a file supplied in the request body to it. The document can then be read, classified or have data extracted from it.

The request body should contain the binary contents of the document's file.

The newly created document resource is returned, along with a 201 Created status. The document resource includes the document's ID, which can then be used with the Get, Read, Classify, Extract Document Data, Get Redacted PDF and Delete endpoints.

The Supported File Types article contains details of all file types supported by Aluma, and the maximum file size.

Files embedded resource

The document resource contains an embedded files resource which includes details of the file that the document was created from.

"files": [
  {
    "id": "p3g-T4kf4EeNQ8baNLA8Uw",
    "file_type": "PDF:ImagePlusText",
    "size": 73136,
    "sha256": "f3ee28bbc30e789202e0f84bcbb187c5abc88d54e081bb3fa8abfa8f1a4603ea"
  }
]

The properties are as follows:

  • id: A unique identifier for this file.
  • file_type: The type of the file as determined by the API by examining the contents of the file. This will have one of the values listed in the table below.
  • size: The size of the file in bytes.
  • sha256: The SHA-256 hash of the file contents.

It is best practice to calculate your own values for size, sha256 and file_type (which in most cases will be a static value) of the file you are submitting and compare these to the values in the response in order to ensure that the file was not corrupted during transmission.

Value of file_type

Description

PDF:ImageOnly

PDF format file comprised only of full-page images, typically indicating a scanned document

PDF:ImagePlusText

PDF format file that has full-page images with 'hidden' text, typically indicating a scanned document that has had OCR used on it

PDF:Misc

PDF format file that has content other than full-page images, typically indicating a PDF generated from electronic content

Image:TIFF

An image in TIFF Format

Image:JPEG

An image in JPEG format

Image:JPEG2000

An image in JPEG-2000 format

OpenXML:Word

Microsoft Office Word (.docx) documents

OpenXML:Spreadsheet

Microsoft Office Excel (.xlsx) documents

OpenXML:Presentation

Microsoft Office PowerPoint (.pptx) documents

Text:ANSI

Plain text file with text in 8-bit ANSI format

Text:UTF8

Plain text file with text in UTF-8 format

Text:UTF16
Text:UTF16_BigEndian

Plain text file with text in UTF-16 format or UTF-16 (big-endian) format

Email:MIME

An Email in MIME (.eml) format

Email:MSG

An Email in Microsoft Outlook (.msg) format

HTML:ANSI

HTML file encoded in 8-bit ANSI format

HTML:UTF8

HTML file encoded in UTF-8 format

HTML:UTF16
HTML:UTF16_BigEndian

HTML file with text in UTF-16 format or UTF16 (big-endian) format

If you know the type of the file and want to validate that the API concurs, you can set the Content-Type header to the MIME-type of the file as shown in the table below. If the file type does not match then the request will be rejected with a 415 response.

File Type

Content-Type header

PDFs

application/pdf

Microsoft Office Word (.docx) documents

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

Microsoft Office Excel (.xlsx) documents

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet

Microsoft Office PowerPoint (.pptx) documents

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation

TIFF image

image/tiff

JPEG image

image/jpeg

JPEG 2000 image

image/jp2

Text document

text/plain

Email message (.eml)

message/rfc822

Outlook email message (.msg)

application/vnd.ms-outlook

HTML document

text/html

RESPONSES

201 The Document was created
400 There is no file supplied in the body
401 There is no Authorization header or the access token is invalid
403 You have reached your maximum number of simultaneous documents
413 The file supplied in the body is too large
415 The Content-Type contains an unsupported type or does not match the actual contents of the file

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