Court Data Fetcher & Mini-Dashboard

A Flask-based web application that fetches live case data, orders, and judgments from the Faridabad District Court eCourts portal.
It provides a searchable dashboard to view case metadata, order history, and download PDF copies of orders/judgments — even when they are embedded in JavaScript-based PDF viewers.

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📍 Court Chosen

This project currently scrapes data from the Faridabad District Court eCourts Services portal (https://services.ecourts.gov.in/).

It supports:

• Fetching case metadata (case type, filing date, status, etc.)
• Displaying orders/judgments in multiple categories (Interim, Final, History, etc.)
• Downloading result page as a PDF

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📂 Project Structure

court-data-fetcher/
│
├── app.py                # Flask entry point
├── scraper.py            # Main scraping & PDF proxy logic
├── models.py             # Data models / helper classes
├── templates/            # HTML templates (form, result, pdf_templates)
├── requirements.txt      # Dependencies
├── .gitignore            # Git ignore file
└── README.md             # Documentation

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⚙️ Setup Steps

1️⃣ Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/court-data-fetcher-mini-dashboard.git
cd court-data-fetcher-mini-dashboard

2️⃣ Create a virtual environment

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate       # Mac/Linux
venv\Scripts\activate          # Windows

3️⃣ Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4️⃣ Run the Flask app

python app.py

5️⃣ Access in browser

http://127.0.0.1:5000

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🛠️ Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the project root with:

# Flask settings
FLASK_APP=app.py
FLASK_ENV=development
SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key_here

# Selenium / ChromeDriver settings
CHROMEDRIVER_PATH=/absolute/path/to/chromedriver
SELENIUM_HEADLESS=True

Note:
If using Selenium in headless mode, ensure you have Google Chrome and the matching ChromeDriver installed.

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🔍 CAPTCHA Strategy

The Faridabad District Court eCourts portal uses CAPTCHA challenges for human verification.
This app uses manual CAPTCHA entry:

• When a search request triggers a CAPTCHA, it will be displayed in the form.
• The user must manually enter the text to proceed.
• Automated CAPTCHA solving is avoided to comply with legal and ethical standards.

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🖥️ How It Works

1. Search Form (form.html) – Enter case details and CAPTCHA (if prompted).
2. Backend Scraper (scraper.py) – Uses requests + BeautifulSoup to fetch and parse court data.
3. Results Dashboard (result.html) – Displays metadata and order/judgment links in categorized tables.

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⚠️ Important – Selenium Step

1. When you perform a search, Selenium will open a browser window to load the court case details.
2. Wait until the case data is fully loaded in the Selenium window.
3. Return to the terminal and press Enter — this will trigger the script to parse the loaded data and redirect you to the results page where the dashboard is generated.

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📸 Screenshots

Example Case 1:

• Case Type: CS - Civil Suit
• Case Number: 121
• Filing Year: 2021

Example Case 2:

• Case Type: CA - Civil Appeal
• Case Number: 121
• Filing Year: 2021

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

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🐍 Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• Google Chrome & ChromeDriver
• Flask
• BeautifulSoup4
• Requests
• Selenium