FlashText i18n

A maintained fork of FlashText with internationalization and Unicode fixes.

Why This Fork?

The original FlashText is no longer actively maintained and has several bugs with international text:

• CJK languages: Adjacent keywords not extracted (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
• Unicode case folding: Wrong span positions for characters like Turkish İ
• Non-ASCII boundaries: Various edge cases with international characters

This fork aims to fix these issues while maintaining full API compatibility.

Fixed in v3.0.0

International Word Boundaries (New in v3.1.0-dev)

The original FlashText only supported ASCII characters (A-Za-z0-9_) as word parts. This caused issues for many languages where characters like é, ß, or ç were treated as delimiters, breaking words apart.

Fixed in v3.1.0: All valid Unicode alphanumeric characters are now treated as part of a word by default.

# Hindi (Devanagari)
kp.add_keyword('नमस्ते')
kp.extract_keywords('नमस्ते दुनिया') 
# ✅ ['नमस्ते'] (Previously failed)

# French/German
kp.add_keyword('café')
kp.extract_keywords('I went to a café.') 
# ✅ ['café'] (Previously extracted 'caf')

CJK Adjacent Keywords

from flashtext import KeywordProcessor

kp = KeywordProcessor()
kp.add_keyword('雅詩蘭黛')  # Estée Lauder
kp.add_keyword('小棕瓶')    # Advanced Night Repair

text = '推薦雅詩蘭黛小棕瓶超好用'
result = kp.extract_keywords(text)
# Original FlashText: ['雅詩蘭黛']  ❌ Missing '小棕瓶'
# FlashText i18n:     ['雅詩蘭黛', '小棕瓶']  ✅ Both extracted!
### Loading Keywords from File (New in v3.1.0-dev)

You can now load keywords directly from JSON or text files.

```python
# keywords.json
# {
#    "Color": ["red", "blue", "green"],
#    "Vehicle": ["car", "bike"]
# }

kp.add_keyword_from_file('keywords.json')

Installation

pip install flashtext-i18n

Or using uv:

uv pip install flashtext-i18n

Or install from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/termdock/flashtext-i18n.git

Usage

The API is 100% compatible with the original FlashText:

from flashtext import KeywordProcessor

# Create processor
kp = KeywordProcessor()

# Add keywords
kp.add_keyword('Python')
kp.add_keyword('機器學習', 'Machine Learning')

# Extract keywords
text = 'I love Python and 機器學習'
keywords = kp.extract_keywords(text)
# ['Python', 'Machine Learning']

# Extract with span info
keywords_with_span = kp.extract_keywords(text, span_info=True)
# [('Python', 7, 13), ('Machine Learning', 18, 22)]

# Replace keywords
new_text = kp.replace_keywords(text)
# 'I love Python and Machine Learning'

# Get replacement details (New in v3.1.0)
new_text, replacements = kp.replace_keywords(text, span_info=True)
# replacements = [
#     {'original': 'Python', 'replacement': 'Python', 'start': 7, 'end': 13},
#     {'original': '機器學習', 'replacement': 'Machine Learning', 'start': 18, 'end': 22}
# ]


# Extract sentences with keywords (New in v3.1.0)
sentences = kp.extract_sentences(text)
# [('I love Python and 機器學習', ['Python', 'Machine Learning'])]

# Get keyword count
print(len(kp))
# 2

# One keyword matching multiple Tags (New in v3.1.0)
kp.add_keyword('Apple', ['Fruit', 'Tech'])
keywords = kp.extract_keywords('I have an Apple')
# ['Fruit', 'Tech']

# Mixed Case Support (Case-Sensitive & Case-Insensitive) (New in v3.1.0)
# Default: case_sensitive=False (Global)
kp = KeywordProcessor()

# Add a case-insensitive keyword (matches 'banana', 'Banana', 'BANANA')
kp.add_keyword('banana')

# Add a case-sensitive keyword (matches 'Apple' ONLY)
kp.add_keyword('Apple', case_sensitive=True)

keywords_found = kp.extract_keywords('I like Apple and Banana.')
# ['Apple', 'banana']

keywords_found = kp.extract_keywords('I like apple and BANANA.')
# ['banana'] (Strict 'Apple' does not match 'apple')

Note: For high performance, FlashText merges case-insensitive paths in the internal Trie. If a case-insensitive keyword overlaps with a case-sensitive keyword (e.g. Loose us vs Strict US), they share the same path. The last added keyword will determine the replacement value for shared matches.

Fuzzy Matching (Levenshtein Distance)

FlashText supports fuzzy matching to handle typos in input text. Use max_cost to specify the maximum allowable Levenshtein distance.

kp = KeywordProcessor()
kp.add_keyword('Machine Learning')

# Exact match
kp.extract_keywords('I love Machine Learning')
# ['Machine Learning']

# Fuzzy match (max_cost=2) -> Matches "Mchine Larning" (2 deletions)
kp.extract_keywords('I love Mchine Larning', max_cost=2)
# ['Machine Learning']

# Fuzzy match for CJK (New in v3.1.0)
kp.add_keyword('人工智慧')
# Matches "人工智障" (1 substitution)
kp.extract_keywords('這有人工智障功能', max_cost=1)
# ['人工智慧']

Performance

FlashText uses the Aho-Corasick algorithm with O(n) time complexity, making it extremely fast. In v3.1.0, we introduced a Trie-based optimization for mixed-case support, eliminating runtime overhead for case-insensitive matching.

(Tested on Apple Silicon)

Roadmap

See Issues for planned fixes:

• Unicode case folding span fix (Turkish İ, German ß) (Fixed in v3.0.0)
• Keywords followed by numbers extraction (Fixed in v3.0.0)
• Internationalized word boundary detection (Fixed in v3.1.0)
• Indian languages (Devanagari) support (Fixed in v3.1.0)
• Load keywords from JSON/Text file (Fixed in v3.1.0)

Credits

This project is a fork of FlashText created by Vikash Singh.

The original FlashText algorithm is described in the paper: Replace or Retrieve Keywords In Documents at Scale

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file.

The original copyright belongs to Vikash Singh (2017). This fork is maintained by termdock & Huang Chung Yi.