Paperless Document Search

Search your Paperless-ngx document archive via the REST API.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json

{
  "url": "https://paperless.example.com",
  "token": "your-api-token-here"
}

Getting an API token

1. Log into your Paperless web UI
2. Click your username (top right) → "My Profile"
3. Click the circular arrow button to generate/regenerate a token

Troubleshooting config

If requests fail, verify the config:

# Check config exists and is valid JSON
cat ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json | jq .

# Test connection
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $(jq -r .token ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json)" \
  "$(jq -r .url ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json)/api/documents/?page_size=1" | jq '.count'

Common issues:

• 401 Unauthorized: Token is invalid/expired → regenerate in web UI
• Connection refused: URL is wrong or server is down
• null or parse error: Config file is missing or malformed

If config is broken, guide the user to provide:

1. Their Paperless-ngx URL (e.g., https://paperless.example.com)
2. A valid API token from their profile page

Then create/update the config:

mkdir -p ~/.config/paperless-search
cat > ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json << 'EOF'
{
  "url": "USER_PROVIDED_URL",
  "token": "USER_PROVIDED_TOKEN"
}
EOF

API Examples

# Load config into variables
PAPERLESS_URL=$(jq -r .url ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json)
PAPERLESS_TOKEN=$(jq -r .token ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json)

# Full-text search
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/documents/?query=invoice+january+2025" | jq '.results[] | {id, title, created}'

# Get document with full OCR content
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/documents/123/" | jq -r '.content'

# List correspondents
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/correspondents/" | jq '.results[] | {id, name}'

# Filter by correspondent
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/documents/?correspondent__id=5" | jq

# Filter by date range
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/documents/?created__date__gte=2024-01-01&created__date__lte=2024-12-31" | jq

# List tags
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/tags/" | jq '.results[] | {id, name}'

# List document types
curl -s -H "Authorization: Token $PAPERLESS_TOKEN" \
  "$PAPERLESS_URL/api/document_types/" | jq '.results[] | {id, name}'

API Reference

Query Parameters for /api/documents/

Document URL format

When linking to documents, always use the base URL from the config file:

PAPERLESS_URL=$(jq -r .url ~/.config/paperless-search/config.json)
echo "$PAPERLESS_URL/documents/{id}/details"

Do NOT hardcode or guess the URL - always read it from the config.