Add Passport OCR to Your Replit App in 5 Minutes

The problem: Glossy pages and complex MRZ strings

Cloud-based AI environments like Replit are remarkable at writing boilerplates and orchestrating backend environments — but they stop at the boundary of specialized document parsing. You can deploy a sleek production tracking interface in seconds, yet the actual extraction of Machine Readable Zones (MRZ) and visual data from a highly reflective passport page requires a dedicated Passport OCR API. Standard vision models routinely fail on holograms, misread country codes, or output unformatted text blocks.

The solution: ICAO-compliant parsing, instantly

StructOCR's /v1/passport endpoint accepts an image stream and returns a clean, fully typed JSON object with the validated travel document fields. It automatically decodes the MRZ lines to cross-check the Visual Inspection Zone (VIZ), ensuring 100% accuracy on passport numbers and dates. Because it runs as a pure REST API, your Replit container can talk to it effortlessly via a zero-dependency server-side request.

Integrate StructOCR in Replit (3 Steps)

1. 1

   Describe your app to Replit Agent

   Open replit.com and start a new workspace using Replit Agent. Describe the travel or KYC tool you want to build — be explicit about the identity fields you need to collect.

   💬Try this prompt: "Build a mobile-friendly hotel check-in application using React and Node.js. Users can upload a photo of their passport data page, and the app will display the extracted full name, passport number, nationality, and expiry date in a clean dashboard workflow."
2. 2

   Instruct the Agent to connect to the StructOCR endpoint

   Once the foundational UI and backend scaffolding are ready, paste the follow-up prompt into the Agent chat panel. Replit Agent will generate the network logic, wire up file stream uploads, and pipe the extracted data safely to your view state.

   💬Follow-up prompt: "When a user uploads an identity image, create a backend endpoint that accepts a Base64 img string and forwards it as JSON to https://api.structocr.com/v1/passport. Authenticate with the x-api-key header using process.env.STRUCTOCR_KEY. Return the JSON payload to the client UI."

   // Replit Agent wires this up inside your server handler const response = await fetch('https://api.structocr.com/v1/passport', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'x-api-key': process.env.STRUCTOCR_KEY, }, body: JSON.stringify({ img: base64Image }), });
3. 3

   Add your StructOCR API key to Replit Secrets

   Navigate to the Tools → Secrets menu in your Replit editor workspace sidebar. Add a new key named STRUCTOCR_KEY and paste your private API token into the value field. The workspace environment automatically loads the variable.

   💬Variable name: STRUCTOCR_KEY — get your free key at structocr.com/dashboard

   Key: STRUCTOCR_KEY Value: sk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What you can build in Replit with this integration

• Hotel & hospitality check-in: Let international guests snap a photo of their passport to instantly populate registration cards, speeding up front-desk operations. A perfect fit for travel automation hosted in cloud environments.
• Airline booking portals: Build a mobile portal where passengers upload their passports during online check-in to automatically capture API (Advance Passenger Information) data.
• Global KYC onboarding: Create a secure onboarding flow for fintech apps that accepts passports from 150+ countries, extracting structured names and birth dates instantly.
• Visa application assistants: Add an upload step to a travel agency portal: extract passport details automatically to pre-fill complex international visa application forms.

The prompt and the code

Copy the follow-up prompt text into your Replit Agent chat interface to implement the bridge handler. The backend example indicates how Replit typically handles file proxying to protect production secrets.

Prerequisite: A free StructOCR account — get your API key at structocr.com/dashboard (no credit card required)

I need to add Passport OCR to this application using a secure backend endpoint.

1. Configure Express to accept JSON requests with an appropriate payload limit.
2. The browser converts the selected image to Base64 and sends { img } to POST /api/verify-passport.
3. The backend must POST application/json to https://api.structocr.com/v1/passport with body { img }.
4. Authenticate upstream with the x-api-key header using process.env.STRUCTOCR_KEY. Never return or expose this secret to the browser.
5. Return the StructOCR JSON response and display data.passport_number, data.surname, data.given_names, data.nationality, and data.date_of_expiry.
6. Implement file-size, loading, upstream error, and invalid-response handling.

What the API returns

A comprehensive JSON object containing the parsed passport fields. Your application can bind this directly to database records or your frontend components.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "passport",
    "country_code": "USA",
    "nationality": "UNITED STATES",
    "passport_number": "E12345678",
    "surname": "DOE",
    "given_names": "JOHN",
    "sex": "M",
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-01",
    "place_of_birth": "NEW YORK, USA",
    "date_of_issue": "2020-01-01",
    "date_of_expiry": "2030-01-01",
    "place_of_issue": "PASSPORT AGENCY"
  }
}