n8n-nodes-tika

n8n community node for Apache Tika — extract text, metadata, detect MIME types and languages from 1000+ document formats.

Apache Tika detects and extracts metadata and text from over a thousand different file types (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, images, and more). This node lets you use Tika directly in your n8n workflows.

Operations

| Operation | Description | |-----------|-------------| | Extract Text | Extract text content from a document (plain text, HTML, or XML output) | | Extract Metadata | Extract metadata (author, title, creation date, etc.) | | Extract All (Recursive) | Extract text and metadata from archives/containers recursively | | Detect MIME Type | Detect the MIME type of a file | | Detect Language | Detect the language of text content |

Prerequisites

You need a running Apache Tika server. The easiest way is Docker:

docker run -p 9998:9998 apache/tika:latest

Or add it to your docker-compose.yml:

tika:
  image: apache/tika:latest
  ports:
    - "9998:9998"

Installation

Community Node (recommended)

1. Go to Settings (gear icon) > Community Nodes in your n8n instance
2. Click Install a community node
3. Enter n8n-nodes-tika
4. Check the risk acknowledgment box and click Install

Note: If the Community Nodes option is not visible, add N8N_COMMUNITY_PACKAGES_ENABLED=true to your n8n environment variables. It is enabled by default in n8n 0.214+.

Manual Installation

cd ~/.n8n
npm install n8n-nodes-tika

Then restart n8n.

Configuration

1. Create a new Tika API credential in n8n
2. Set the Server URL to your Tika server:
   • Docker Compose (both services in the same network): http://tika:9998
   • Standalone Docker / local: http://localhost:9998
3. Optionally adjust the Timeout for large documents (default: 30s)

Usage Examples

Extract text from a PDF

1. Use an HTTP Request or Read Binary File node to get a PDF
2. Connect it to the Tika node
3. Set Operation to "Extract Text"
4. The extracted text is available in {{ $json.text }}

Extract metadata from a document

1. Get a document file via any binary-producing node
2. Set Operation to "Extract Metadata"
3. Access metadata fields like {{ $json["Content-Type"] }}, {{ $json["dc:title"] }}, etc.

OCR an image

1. Get an image file
2. Set Operation to "Extract Text"
3. Under Options, set OCR Language to the appropriate language code
4. Tika will use Tesseract OCR to extract text from the image

Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | Output Format | Plain text, HTML, or XML (for Extract Text only) | | OCR Language | Tesseract language code for OCR (default: eng) | | OCR Strategy | auto, no_ocr, ocr_only, or ocr_and_text | | Content Type Override | Manually set the document MIME type | | Password | Password for encrypted documents |

Compatibility

• n8n version: 0.5+
• Node.js: 18+

License

MIT