Hong Kong HKID OCR API with Python

Working with the Hong Kong Identity Card (HKID)

The smart HKID shows the holder’s name in English and Chinese, the HKID number with its check character in brackets, and date of birth. Re-keying these values is slow, and generic OCR still leaves your team to map each text fragment to the right field.

Structured Extraction for Your Backend

The National ID OCR API returns the HKID number, names, dates, and address when they are printed on the submitted side of the card. Test it with the free ID card scanner.

Common Integration Scenarios

• Customer onboarding: Pre-fill identity fields from the Hong Kong Identity Card (HKID) before the customer confirms them.
• Account operations: Reduce manual transcription when staff enter identity data.
• Document review: Store normalized output next to your own review decision.

Hong Kong HKID OCR API with Python

The official Python SDK reads a local file and calls /v1/national-id from your backend.

Prerequisite: `pip install structocr`; set the server-side `STRUCTOCR_API_KEY` environment variable.

Prefer another stack? Open the Node.js SDK + Express integration.

import os
from structocr import StructOCR

client = StructOCR(os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"])
result = client.scan_national_id("id-card.jpg")

if result.get("success"):
    data = result["data"]
    print(data.get("document_number"))
    print(data.get("given_names"), data.get("surname"))
else:
    print(result.get("error"))

JSON Response Example

Fictional values showing the normalized shape for a readable Hong Kong Identity Card (HKID); unavailable fields are null.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "national_id",
    "country_code": "HKG",
    "document_number": "A000000(0)",
    "personal_number": null,
    "surname": "DOE",
    "given_names": "ALEX",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-01",
    "place_of_birth": null,
    "date_of_issue": null,
    "date_of_expiry": null,
    "issuing_authority": null,
    "address": null,
    "additional_fields": {}
  }
}