Lines and Words of Text

Detected text that's returned by Amazon Textract operations is returned in a list of Block objects. These objects represent lines of text or textual words that are detected on a document page. The following text shows two lines of text that are made from multiple words.

This is text.

In two separate lines.

Detected text is returned in the Text field of a Block object. The BlockType field determines if the text is a line of text (LINE) or a word (WORD). A WORD is one or more ISO basic Latin script characters that aren't separated by spaces. A LINE is a string of tab-delimited and contiguous words.

Additionally, Amazon Textract will determine if a piece of text was handwritten or printed using the TextTypes field. These return as HANDWRITING and PRINTED respectively.

The other Block properties are common to all block types, such as the ID, confidence, and geometry information. For more information, see Text Detection and Document Analysis Response Objects.

To detect only lines and words, you can use DetectDocumentText or StartDocumentTextDetection. For more information, see Detecting Text. To get the detected text (lines and words) and information about how it relates to other parts of the document, such as tables, you can use AnalyzeDocument or StartDocumentAnalysis. For more information, see Analyzing Documents.

PAGE, LINE, and WORD blocks are related to each other in a parent-to-child relationship. A PAGE block is the parent for all LINE block objects on a document page. Because a LINE can have one or more words, the Relationships array for a LINE block stores the IDs for child WORD blocks that make up the line of text.

The following diagram shows how the line Hello, world. in the text Hello, world. How are you? is represented by Block objects.

The following is the JSON output from DetectDocumentText when the sentence Hello, world. How are you? is detected. The first example is the JSON for the document page. Note how the CHILD IDs enable you to navigate through the document.

{
    "Geometry": {...}, 
    "Relationships": [
        {
            "Type": "CHILD", 
            "Ids": [
                "d7fbd604-d609-4d69-857d-247a3f591238", // Line - Hello, world.
                "b6c19a93-6493-4d8e-958f-853c8f7ca055" //  Line - How are you?
            ]
        }
    ], 
    "BlockType": "PAGE", 
    "Id": "56ec1d77-171f-4881-9852-2b5b7e761608"
},

The following is the JSON for the LINE blocks that make up the line "Hello, World":

{
    "Relationships": [
        {
            "Type": "CHILD", 
            "Ids": [
                "7f97e2ca-063e-47a8-981c-8beee31afc01", // Word - Hello,
                "4b990aa0-af96-4369-b90f-dbe02538ed21"  // Word - world.
            ]
        }
    ], 
    "Confidence": 99.63229370117188, 
    "Geometry": {...}, 
    "Text": "Hello, world.", 
    "BlockType": "LINE", 
    "Id": "d7fbd604-d609-4d69-857d-247a3f591238"
},

The following is the JSON for the WORD block for the word Hello,:

{
    "Geometry": {...}, 
    "Text": "Hello,", 
    "TextType": "PRINTED",
    "BlockType": "WORD", 
    "Confidence": 99.74746704101562, 
    "Id": "7f97e2ca-063e-47a8-981c-8beee31afc01"
}, 

The final JSON is the WORD block for the word world.:

{
    "Geometry": {...}, 
    "Text": "world.",
    "TextType": "PRINTED",
    "BlockType": "WORD", 
    "Confidence": 99.5171127319336, 
    "Id": "4b990aa0-af96-4369-b90f-dbe02538ed21"
},