Process documents with Form Parser

This quickstart introduces you to the Form Parser feature in Document AI. In this quickstart, you use the Google Cloud console to set up your Google Cloud project and authorization, create a Form Parser, and then make a request for Document AI to process a PDF form.

Learn how to:

  1. Enable Document AI in a Google Cloud project.

  2. Create a Form Parser processor, which can identify and extract text, key-value pairs, tables, and generic entities from many types of documents.

  3. Use the processor to annotate a sample document.


To follow step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me


Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Enable the Document AI API.

    Enable the API

  5. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  6. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  7. Enable the Document AI API.

    Enable the API

Create a Form Parser processor

Use the Google Cloud console to create a Form Parser processor. See creating and managing processors for more information.

  1. In the Google Cloud console navigation menu, click Document AI and select Processor Gallery.

    Processor Gallery

  2. In the Processor Gallery, search for Form Parser and select Create.

    Form Parser option in UI

  3. In the side window, enter a Processor name, such as quickstart-form-processor.

  4. Select the region closest to you.

  5. Click the Create button.

You're taken to the Processor Details page of your new form parser processor.

Test Processor

After creating your processor, you can send annotation requests to it.

  1. Download the sample document.

    It's a PDF file containing a sample handwritten medical intake form. This document is stored in a publicly accessible Cloud Storage bucket.

  2. Click the Upload Test Document button and select the document you just downloaded.

  3. You should now be on the Form Parser analysis page. You can view the OCR detected text, key-value pairs, tables, and generic entities extracted from the document.

    sample form key-value pairs in UI sample form generic entities in UI

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

To avoid unnecessary Google Cloud charges, use the Google Cloud console to delete your processor and project if you do not need them.

What's next