PACER Utilities

The Pacer class provides a standalone utility for downloading dockets and documents from PACER with juriscraper.

To use it, set your PACER credentials by running:

da configure pacer

Purchase and parse a docket

from docketanalyzer import Pacer, construct_docket_id

court, docket_number = "insd", "1:24-cv-00524"
docket_id = construct_docket_id(court, docket_number) # "insd__1_24-cv-00524"

pacer = Pacer()
docket_html, docket_json = pacer.purchase_docket(docket_id)
print(json.dumps(docket_json, indent=2))

Parse an existing HTML docket

docket_json = pacer.parse(docket_html, court)
print(json.dumps(docket_json, indent=2))

Download a document for a docket entry

pacer_case_id = docket_json['pacer_case_id']
entry = docket_json['entries'][0] # First entry

pdf, status = pacer.purchase_document(
    pacer_case_id=pacer_case_id,
    pacer_doc_id=entry['pacer_doc_id'],
    court=court
)

if status == 'success':
    with open('document.pdf', 'wb') as f:
        f.write(pdf)

Download an attachment

pdf, status = pacer.purchase_attachment(
    pacer_case_id=pacer_case_id,
    pacer_doc_id=entry['pacer_doc_id'],
    attachment_number=1,  # First attachment
    court=court
)

if status == 'success':
    with open('attachment.pdf', 'wb') as f:
        f.write(pdf)