How to specify correct tessdata path in MAUI Android/iOS/Windows project when TesseractEngine loads data?

[SunshineSpring666]

I'd like to use Tesseract OCR in a MAUI (Android/iOS/Windows) project.
How to specify a proper path like the following one illustrated in documentation (not working in MAUI).

using (var engine = new TesseractEngine(@"./tessdata", "eng", EngineMode.Default))

Note that the tessdata is already located in the project root as the documentation said. How to specify the proper data path parameter of TesseractEngine() in MAUI Android/iOS/Windows project?
Thank you guys.

[SunshineSpring666]

Hey guys,
Any thought on this? Hope the Tesseract OCR could work in MAUI project on Android and iOS devices.

[Jsrc1990]

Hello, do you have any results please? I need to implement it in MAUI Android/iOS/Windows

[SMiszczak]

Hi, I just use something like this:
string projectFolderPath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
string folderPath = Path.Combine(projectFolderPath, "tessdata");
folderPath = folderPath.Replace("\", "/");,
using (var engine = new TesseractEngine(folderPath , "eng", EngineMode.Default))

[SunshineSpring666]

Hi @SMiszczak ,
Thanks for your reply.
I tried your code snippet on latest VS/MAUI/.NET 8 environment, it ends up crash on Windows with Unhandled Exception sometimes:
Exception = {"Object reference not set to an instance of an object."}
Does it happen sometimes on your side?

Note that I replaced your last line with
string path = folderPath.Replace("\", "/");
to make it compilable.

---

I used to use another code snippet to make it work on Windows (Only Windows, not work on Android/iOS):
string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(App.Assembly.Location);
path = Path.Combine(path, "tessdata");
path = path.Replace("file:\", "");
path = path.Replace("file:", "");

[SMiszczak]

I am using an older version of the environment, but this should not be a problem. Maybe try using a breakpoint to see the full path and see if tessdata is there. My full path looks like this ...appName/bin/Debug/net6.0-windows10.0.19041.0/win10-x64/AppX/tessdata for Windows. The last line you mentioned depends on the settings and in my case the code compiles and works fine. At the moment I can't try Android because of a bug with another library, but when I get rid of it I will give you feedback if it works.
If you find another solution please let me know

[SunshineSpring666]

Hi @SMiszczak ,
Setting breakpoint to check the full path then continue to run actually make the Exception not reproduce. Weird.
But, if the breakpoint is removed, the above Exception shows sometimes.
Thanks.