Description

n8n-nodes-docspell

This is a n8n community node. It lets you use Docspell in your n8n workflows.

Docspell assists in organizing your piles of digital documents, resulting from scanners, e-mails and other sources with minimal effort.

n8n is a fair-code licensed workflow automation platform.

Installation
Operations
Credentials
Compatibility
Resources

Installation

Follow the installation guide in the n8n community nodes documentation.

Operations

Item

• Get: fetch the full detail of one item by its ID (tags, attachments, notes, custom fields, correspondents). Chain it after Search with {{ $json.id }}.
• Update: change an item’s name, notes, direction, item date, due date, folder, correspondent organization and person, concerning person and equipment, tags and custom fields. Only the fields you add are touched, and an empty value removes the current one where that makes sense. Tags can be replaced, added to or removed, by name or ID, and a tag that does not exist is an error instead of being ignored. Folder, organization, person, equipment, tags and custom fields are chosen from lists loaded from your Docspell; an expression can still supply a name or ID. Custom fields can also be removed from the item (an item without the field is left as it is). The updated item is returned. If a change fails part-way, the error lists what was already applied.
• Update Many: apply the same changes to several items at once, by a list of item IDs (separated by commas, spaces or new lines; take them from a Search with an expression). The fields are those of Update except the notes, which Docspell cannot change in bulk. You can also remove a custom field from all of them. Every ID is checked first, because Docspell silently ignores IDs it does not know. Nothing is changed if one is missing. Returns the updated items.
• Upload: upload files from the incoming binary data, either one file per input item or several at once (comma-separated binary field names). Docspell turns them into items after processing, so the result lists the uploaded file names rather than item IDs; use Search to find the items afterwards. Options (folder and tags are chosen from lists): direction, folder, tags, language, one item for all files, skip duplicates, flatten archives, file filter and attachments only. A folder or tag that does not exist is an error instead of being ignored.
• Search: find items with Docspell’s query language. Returns one n8n item per Docspell item. Supports Return All, a limit, an offset, searching the trash, and Include Details to also resolve tags and attachments.

Attachment

• Download: download the file of an attachment as binary data, ready for other nodes (save it, send it, attach it). Take the attachment ID from the attachments of Item > Get or of a Search with details. Choose the version: the file as Docspell shows it (the converted PDF where there is one), the original upload, the archive, or the preview image. The file is kept byte for byte. It is read into memory as a whole, so very large files need that much memory in n8n.

Organization

• Get: fetch one organization by its ID, including its short name, address and contacts. An item only carries the ID and name of its correspondent organization, so use this to get the rest.
• Get Many: list the organizations. The filter matches the name or short name. Returns one n8n item per organization.

More operations are planned.

Credentials

Use the URL of your Docspell instance, your full account name (collective/username) and your password. Accounts with two-factor authentication are not supported. The node logs in once and reuses the session until shortly before it expires.

Compatibility


Last tested with n8n 2.47.3 and Docspell 0.43.0.


Versioning

The package version mirrors the Docspell it was last tested with: major.minor is Docspell’s, so 0.43.x goes with Docspell 0.43. The patch number is this package’s own counter.

• Every change to the node, including breaking ones, only bumps the patch. Breaking changes are called out in the release notes, not in the version number. Read the notes before updating.
• When Docspell’s major or minor version changes, the next release is ..0, after the nightly compatibility check has passed against the new Docspell.

Versions before 0.43.0 (the single 0.1.0 release) used an independent numbering and were a different, generated node. 0.43.0 is the first release under this scheme; it is numerically higher than 0.1.0, so updates are not blocked.

Resources

• n8n community nodes documentation
• Docspell Introduction