# The REST API

Paperless makes use of the [Django REST
Framework](https://django-rest-framework.org/) standard API interface. It
provides a browsable API for most of its endpoints, which you can
inspect at `http://<paperless-host>:<port>/api/`. This also documents
most of the available filters and ordering fields.

The API provides 7 main endpoints:

- `/api/documents/`: Full CRUD support, except POSTing new documents.
  See below.
- `/api/correspondents/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/document_types/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/logs/`: Read-Only.
- `/api/tags/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/tasks/`: Read-only.
- `/api/mail_accounts/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/mail_rules/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/users/`: Full CRUD support.
- `/api/groups/`: Full CRUD support.

All of these endpoints except for the logging endpoint allow you to
fetch (and edit and delete where appropriate) individual objects by
appending their primary key to the path, e.g. `/api/documents/454/`.

The objects served by the document endpoint contain the following
fields:

- `id`: ID of the document. Read-only.
- `title`: Title of the document.
- `content`: Plain text content of the document.
- `tags`: List of IDs of tags assigned to this document, or empty
  list.
- `document_type`: Document type of this document, or null.
- `correspondent`: Correspondent of this document or null.
- `created`: The date time at which this document was created.
- `created_date`: The date (YYYY-MM-DD) at which this document was
  created. Optional. If also passed with created, this is ignored.
- `modified`: The date at which this document was last edited in
  paperless. Read-only.
- `added`: The date at which this document was added to paperless.
  Read-only.
- `archive_serial_number`: The identifier of this document in a
  physical document archive.
- `original_file_name`: Verbose filename of the original document.
  Read-only.
- `archived_file_name`: Verbose filename of the archived document.
  Read-only. Null if no archived document is available.

## Downloading documents

In addition to that, the document endpoint offers these additional
actions on individual documents:

- `/api/documents/<pk>/download/`: Download the document.
- `/api/documents/<pk>/preview/`: Display the document inline, without
  downloading it.
- `/api/documents/<pk>/thumb/`: Download the PNG thumbnail of a
  document.

Paperless generates archived PDF/A documents from consumed files and
stores both the original files as well as the archived files. By
default, the endpoints for previews and downloads serve the archived
file, if it is available. Otherwise, the original file is served. Some
document cannot be archived.

The endpoints correctly serve the response header fields
`Content-Disposition` and `Content-Type` to indicate the filename for
download and the type of content of the document.

In order to download or preview the original document when an archived
document is available, supply the query parameter `original=true`.

!!! tip

    Paperless used to provide these functionality at `/fetch/<pk>/preview`,
    `/fetch/<pk>/thumb` and `/fetch/<pk>/doc`. Redirects to the new URLs are
    in place. However, if you use these old URLs to access documents, you
    should update your app or script to use the new URLs.

## Getting document metadata

The api also has an endpoint to retrieve read-only metadata about
specific documents. this information is not served along with the
document objects, since it requires reading files and would therefore
slow down document lists considerably.

Access the metadata of a document with an ID `id` at
`/api/documents/<id>/metadata/`.

The endpoint reports the following data:

- `original_checksum`: MD5 checksum of the original document.
- `original_size`: Size of the original document, in bytes.
- `original_mime_type`: Mime type of the original document.
- `media_filename`: Current filename of the document, under which it
  is stored inside the media directory.
- `has_archive_version`: True, if this document is archived, false
  otherwise.
- `original_metadata`: A list of metadata associated with the original
  document. See below.
- `archive_checksum`: MD5 checksum of the archived document, or null.
- `archive_size`: Size of the archived document in bytes, or null.
- `archive_metadata`: Metadata associated with the archived document,
  or null. See below.

File metadata is reported as a list of objects in the following form:

```json
[
  {
    "namespace": "http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/",
    "prefix": "pdf",
    "key": "Producer",
    "value": "SparklePDF, Fancy edition"
  }
]
```

`namespace` and `prefix` can be null. The actual metadata reported
depends on the file type and the metadata available in that specific
document. Paperless only reports PDF metadata at this point.

## Authorization

The REST api provides three different forms of authentication.

1.  Basic authentication

    Authorize by providing a HTTP header in the form

    ```
    Authorization: Basic <credentials>
    ```

    where `credentials` is a base64-encoded string of
    `<username>:<password>`

2.  Session authentication

    When you're logged into paperless in your browser, you're
    automatically logged into the API as well and don't need to provide
    any authorization headers.

3.  Token authentication

    Paperless also offers an endpoint to acquire authentication tokens.

    POST a username and password as a form or json string to
    `/api/token/` and paperless will respond with a token, if the login
    data is correct. This token can be used to authenticate other
    requests with the following HTTP header:

    ```
    Authorization: Token <token>
    ```

    Tokens can be managed and revoked in the paperless admin.

## Searching for documents

Full text searching is available on the `/api/documents/` endpoint. Two
specific query parameters cause the API to return full text search
results:

- `/api/documents/?query=your%20search%20query`: Search for a document
  using a full text query. For details on the syntax, see [Basic Usage - Searching](/usage#basic-usage_searching).
- `/api/documents/?more_like=1234`: Search for documents similar to
  the document with id 1234.

Pagination works exactly the same as it does for normal requests on this
endpoint.

Certain limitations apply to full text queries:

- Results are always sorted by search score. The results matching the
  query best will show up first.
- Only a small subset of filtering parameters are supported.

Furthermore, each returned document has an additional `__search_hit__`
attribute with various information about the search results:

```
{
    "count": 31,
    "next": "http://localhost:8000/api/documents/?page=2&query=test",
    "previous": null,
    "results": [

        ...

        {
            "id": 123,
            "title": "title",
            "content": "content",

            ...

            "__search_hit__": {
                "score": 0.343,
                "highlights": "text <span class="match">Test</span> text",
                "rank": 23
            }
        },

        ...

    ]
}
```

- `score` is an indication how well this document matches the query
  relative to the other search results.
- `highlights` is an excerpt from the document content and highlights
  the search terms with `<span>` tags as shown above.
- `rank` is the index of the search results. The first result will
  have rank 0.

### `/api/search/autocomplete/`

Get auto completions for a partial search term.

Query parameters:

- `term`: The incomplete term.
- `limit`: Amount of results. Defaults to 10.

Results returned by the endpoint are ordered by importance of the term
in the document index. The first result is the term that has the highest
[Tf/Idf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf) score in the index.

```json
["term1", "term3", "term6", "term4"]
```

## POSTing documents {#file-uploads}

The API provides a special endpoint for file uploads:

`/api/documents/post_document/`

POST a multipart form to this endpoint, where the form field `document`
contains the document that you want to upload to paperless. The filename
is sanitized and then used to store the document in a temporary
directory, and the consumer will be instructed to consume the document
from there.

The endpoint supports the following optional form fields:

- `title`: Specify a title that the consumer should use for the
  document.
- `created`: Specify a DateTime where the document was created (e.g.
  "2016-04-19" or "2016-04-19 06:15:00+02:00").
- `correspondent`: Specify the ID of a correspondent that the consumer
  should use for the document.
- `document_type`: Similar to correspondent.
- `tags`: Similar to correspondent. Specify this multiple times to
  have multiple tags added to the document.
- `archive_serial_number`: An optional archive serial number to set.

The endpoint will immediately return HTTP 200 if the document consumption
process was started successfully, with the UUID of the consumption task
as the data. No additional status information about the consumption process
itself is available immediately, since that happens in a different process.
However, querying the tasks endpoint with the returned UUID e.g.
`/api/tasks/?task_id={uuid}` will provide information on the state of the
consumption including the ID of a created document if consumption succeeded.

## API Versioning

The REST API is versioned since Paperless-ngx 1.3.0.

- Versioning ensures that changes to the API don't break older
  clients.
- Clients specify the specific version of the API they wish to use
  with every request and Paperless will handle the request using the
  specified API version.
- Even if the underlying data model changes, older API versions will
  always serve compatible data.
- If no version is specified, Paperless will serve version 1 to ensure
  compatibility with older clients that do not request a specific API
  version.

API versions are specified by submitting an additional HTTP `Accept`
header with every request:

```
Accept: application/json; version=6
```

If an invalid version is specified, Paperless 1.3.0 will respond with
"406 Not Acceptable" and an error message in the body. Earlier
versions of Paperless will serve API version 1 regardless of whether a
version is specified via the `Accept` header.

If a client wishes to verify whether it is compatible with any given
server, the following procedure should be performed:

1.  Perform an _authenticated_ request against any API endpoint. If the
    server is on version 1.3.0 or newer, the server will add two custom
    headers to the response:

    ```
    X-Api-Version: 2
    X-Version: 1.3.0
    ```

2.  Determine whether the client is compatible with this server based on
    the presence/absence of these headers and their values if present.

### API Changelog

#### Version 1

Initial API version.

#### Version 2

- Added field `Tag.color`. This read/write string field contains a hex
  color such as `#a6cee3`.
- Added read-only field `Tag.text_color`. This field contains the text
  color to use for a specific tag, which is either black or white
  depending on the brightness of `Tag.color`.
- Removed field `Tag.colour`.
