"""
Handles processing of image inputs (e.g., receipts).
"""
import logging

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

def process_image_input(image_data: bytes) -> str:
    """
    Placeholder for image input processing.
    This will eventually involve OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

    Args:
        image_data: The raw bytes of the image file.

    Returns:
        The extracted text from the image, or an empty string if failed.
    """
    logger.info("Processing image input (stub).")
    # In a real implementation, you would use a library like Tesseract or a cloud service.
    # For example:
    # try:
    #     text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(io.BytesIO(image_data)))
    #     return text
    # except Exception as e:
    #     logger.error(f"OCR processing failed: {e}")
    #     return ""
    
    return "Sample text extracted from receipt image."