Blocks

The methods of the LAY object that work on layout blocks are:

• getBlocksCount
• getBlock
• getBlockText

getBlocksCount

The getBlocksCount returns the number of blocks detected in the document layout.

The syntax is:

LAY.getBlocksCount()

The method returns an integer representing the number of blocks.

Info

The bounding box of each page, which contains all the pages blocks, is also counted as a block.

getBlock

Given an ID, the getBlock method returns an object that represents the layout block with that ID.

Considering the example given in the introduction, the instruction:

var block = LAY.getBlock(3);

sets the variable block to an object corresponding to the block with ID 3. The object may look like this:

{
    "id": 3,
    "parent": 1,
    "pageNumber": 1,
    "type": "text",
    "x0": 67,
    "y0": 139,
    "x1": 152,
    "y1": 176,
    "children": [],
    "beginPos": 8,
    "endPos": 24,
    "tokenBegin": 1,
    "tokenEnd": 8,
    "wordBegin": 1,
    "wordEnd": 2,
    "label": ""
}

where:

Field name	Description	Field type	Default value
id	A unique id associated to the block	Integer	-1
parent	The id of the parent block	Integer	-1
pageNumber	The page number in which the block is situated	Integer	-1
type	The type of block: Value Block type page The "container" (it has no text of its own) of all the textual elements displayed on a page text A block of text (e.g. a paragraph, a text box) at the body-level, i.e. not a title title A heading table The "container" (it has no text of its own) of all the element (cells) of a table cell A table's cell header A page header footer A page footer toc An item of the table of contents	String	Empty string
label	A label with some additional information on the block	String	Empty string
x0	The x-axis coordinate of the upper-left corner of the block, relative to the page	Integer	0
y0	The y-axis coordinate of the upper-left corner of the block, relative to the page	Integer	0
x1	The x-axis coordinate of the lower-right corner of the block, relative to the page	Integer	0
y1	The y-axis coordinate of the lower-right corner of the block, relative to the page	Integer	0
children	The id of the blocks that are children of the block (like the blocks of a page or the cells of a table)	List of Integers	Empty array
beginPos	The position in the text in which the block content starts	Integer	-1
endPos	The position in the text in which the block content ends	Integer	-1
tokenBegin	The index of the first token in the block content	Integer	-1
tokenEnd	The index of the last token in the block content	Integer	-1
wordBegin	The index of the first word in the block	Integer	-1
wordEnd	The index of the last word in the block	Integer	-1

The syntax is:

LAY.getBlock(id);

where id is the block ID.

getBlockText

The getBlockText method returns the text contained in the block with the given ID, or undefined if the ID is not valid.

Info

Block IDs are not zero-based so they start from 1.

For example the instruction:

var blockText = LAY.getBlockText(3);

sets a variable called blockText that, considering the Extract example output described in the dedicated page, is set to the following value:

DATE: 
10/21/2015

The syntax is:

LAY.getBlockText(id);

where id is the block ID.