Computed field methods

Computed Field methods transform the output of one or more Field objects. Common use cases for computed fields include:

  • Clean up raw output: If the output contains extra characters, strings, etc, you can often use a Computed Field method to strip out the unwanted data. Or, you can split or join data from different fields.
  • Standardize output across configs: If you extract inconsistently formatted data from different vendors or documents, for example "6 month policy period" versus "six mo. policy duration", you can map to a common format. Consistently formatted output helps your application to handle extractions with fewer checks for corner cases.
  • Add metadata: If a document lacks information that you want to include in the extraction, you can add it.
  • Pick only selected choices from radio button groups or other groups.

Parameters

The following global parameters are common to all Computed Field methods.

keyvaluedescription
id (required)stringSensible uses the ID as the key in the structured key/value output. In the API response, this output is in the parsed_document section. To specify fallbacks, use the same ID for multiple Computed Field methods. Succeeding fields act as fallbacks if the first returns null. For example, to capture differences in wording between document revisions, define two fields with the same ID, which use synonymous source ids that may be present or absent in different document revisions.
method (required)objectThe method describes the Computed Field method used to transform fields. This object's ID parameter specifies the method, for example, Concatenate or Zip.
typestring (default: string)Specifies the type of the output value. For more information about types, see Field query object.

Notes

See also Advanced computed field methods.