spaczz 0.2.0

Adds fuzzy matching and additional regex matching support to spaCy.

spaczz: Fuzzy matching and more for spaCy

Spaczz provides fuzzy matching and multi-token regex matching functionality for spaCy. Spaczz's components have similar APIs to their spaCy counterparts and spaczz pipeline components can integrate into spaCy pipelines where they can be saved/loaded as models.

Fuzzy matching is currently performed with matchers from RapidFuzz's fuzz module and regex matching currently relies on the regex library. Spaczz certainly takes additional influence from other libraries and resources. For additional details see the references section.

Spaczz has been tested on Ubuntu 18.04, MacOS 10.15, and Windows Server 2019.

v0.2.0 Release Notes:

• Fuzzy matching is now performed with RapidFuzz instead of FuzzyWuzzy.
  • RapidFuzz is higher performance with a more liberal license.
• The spaczz ruler now automatically sets a custom, boolean, Span attribute on all entities it adds.
  • This is set by the attr parameter during SpaczzRuler instantiation and defaults to: "spaczz_ent".
  • For example: an entity set by the spaczz ruler will have ent._.spaczz_ent set to True.
• Spaczz ruler patterns now support optional "id" values like spaCy's entity ruler. See this spaCy documentation for usage details.
• Automated Windows testing is now part of the build process.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Basic Usage
  • Fuzzy Matcher
  • Regex Matcher
  • SpaczzRuler
  • Saving/Loading
• Limitations
• Future State
• Development
• References

Installation

Spaczz can be installed using pip.

pip install spaczz

Basic Usage

Spaczz's primary features are fuzzy and regex matchers that function similarily to spaCy's phrase matcher, and the spaczz ruler which integrates the fuzzy/regex matcher into a spaCy pipeline component similar to spaCy's entity ruler.

Fuzzy Matcher

The basic usage of the fuzzy matcher is similar to spaCy's phrase matcher.

import spacy
from spaczz.matcher import FuzzyMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
text = """Grint Anderson created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

matcher = FuzzyMatcher(nlp.vocab)
matcher.add("NAME", [nlp("Grant Andersen")])
matcher.add("GPE", [nlp("Nashville")])
matches = matcher(doc)

for match_id, start, end in matches:
    print(match_id, doc[start:end])

NAME Grint Anderson
GPE Nashv1le

Unlike spaCy matchers, spaczz matchers are written in pure Python. While they are required to have a spaCy vocab passed to them during initialization, this is purely for consistency as the spaczz matchers do not use currently use the spaCy vocab. This is why the match_id is simply a string in the above example instead of an integer value like in spaCy matchers.

Spaczz matchers can also make use of on match rules via callback functions. These on match callbacks need to accept the matcher itself, the doc the matcher was called on, the match index and the matches produced by the matcher.

import spacy
from spacy.tokens import Span
from spaczz.matcher import FuzzyMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
text = """Grint Anderson created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

def add_name_ent(
    matcher, doc, i, matches
):
    """Callback on match function. Adds "NAME" entities to doc."""
    # Get the current match and create tuple of entity label, start and end.
    # Append entity to the doc's entity. (Don't overwrite doc.ents!)
    match_id, start, end = matches[i]
    entity = Span(doc, start, end, label="NAME")
    doc.ents += (entity,)

matcher = FuzzyMatcher(nlp.vocab)
matcher.add("NAME", [nlp("Grant Andersen")], on_match=add_name_ent)
matches = matcher(doc)

for ent in doc.ents:
    print((ent.text, ent.start, ent.end, ent.label_))

('Grint Anderson', 0, 2, 'NAME')

Like spaCy's EntityRuler, a very similar entity updating logic has been implemented in the SpaczzRuler. The SpaczzRuler also takes care of handling overlapping matches. It is discussed in a later section.

Unlike spaCy's matchers, rules added to spaczz matchers have optional keyword arguments that can modify the matching behavior. Take the below fuzzy matching example:

import spacy
from spaczz.matcher import FuzzyMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
# Let's modify the order of the name in the text.
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

matcher = FuzzyMatcher(nlp.vocab)
matcher.add("NAME", [nlp("Grant Andersen")])
matches = matcher(doc)

# The default fuzzy matching settings will not find a match.
for match_id, start, end in matches:
    print(match_id, doc[start:end])

Next we change the fuzzy matching behavior for the "NAME" rule.

import spacy
from spaczz.matcher import FuzzyMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
# Let's modify the order of the name in the text.
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

matcher = FuzzyMatcher(nlp.vocab)
matcher.add("NAME", [nlp("Grant Andersen")], kwargs=[{"fuzzy_func": "token_sort"}])
matches = matcher(doc)

# The default fuzzy matching settings will not find a match.
for match_id, start, end in matches:
    print(match_id, doc[start:end])

NAME Anderson, Grint

• fuzzy_func: Key name of fuzzy matching function to use. All rapidfuzz matching functions with default settings are available. Default is "simple". The included fuzzy matchers are:
  • "simple" = fuzz.ratio
  • "partial" = fuzz.partial_ratio
  • "token_set" = fuzz.token_set_ratio
  • "token_sort" = fuzz.token_sort_ratio
  • "partial_token_set" = fuzz.partial_token_set_ratio
  • "partial_token_sort" = fuzz.partial_token_sort_ratio
  • "quick" = fuzz.QRatio
  • "weighted" = fuzz.WRatio
  • "quick_lev" = fuzz.quick_lev_ratio
• ignore_case: If strings should be lower-cased before fuzzy matching or not. Default is True.
• min_r1: Minimum fuzzy match ratio required for selection during the intial search over doc. This should be lower than min_r2 and "low" in general because match span boundaries are not flexed initially. 0 means all spans of query length in doc will have their boundaries flexed and will be recompared during match optimization. Lower min_r1 will result in more fine-grained matching but will run slower. Default is 25.
• min_r2: Minimum fuzzy match ratio required for selection during match optimization. Should be higher than min_r1 and "high" in general to ensure only quality matches are returned. Default is 75.
• flex: Number of tokens to move match span boundaries left and right during match optimization. Default is "default".

Regex Matcher

The basic usage of the regex matcher is also fairly similar to spaCy's phrase matcher. It accepts regex patterns as strings so flags must be inline. Regexes are compiled with the regex package so approximate fuzzy matching is supported.

import spacy
from spaczz.matcher import RegexMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

matcher = RegexMatcher(nlp.vocab)
# Use inline flags for regex strings as needed
matcher.add("APT", [r"""(?ix)((?:apartment|apt|building|bldg|floor|fl|suite|ste|unit
|room|rm|department|dept|row|rw)\.?\s?)#?\d{1,4}[a-z]?"""]) # Not the most robust regex.
matcher.add("GPE", [r"(?i)[U](nited|\.?) ?[S](tates|\.?)"])
matches = matcher(doc)

for match_id, start, end in matches:
    print(match_id, doc[start:end])

APT Apt 5
GPE USA

Spaczz matchers can also make use of on match rules via callback functions. These on match callbacks need to accept the matcher itself, the doc the matcher was called on, the match index and the matches produced by the matcher. See the fuzzy matcher usage example for details.

Like the fuzzy matcher, the regex matcher has optional keyword arguments that can modify matching behavior. Take the below regex matching example.

import spacy
from spaczz.matcher import RegexMatcher

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

matcher = RegexMatcher(nlp.vocab)
# Use inline flags for regex strings as needed
matcher.add("STREET", ["street_addresses"], kwargs=[{"predef": True}]) # Use predefined regex by key name.
# Below will not expand partial matches to span boundaries.
matcher.add("GPE", [r"(?i)[U](nited|\.?) ?[S](tates|\.?)"], kwargs=[{"partial": False}])
matches = matcher(doc)

for match_id, start, end in matches:
    print(match_id, doc[start:end])

STREET 555 Fake St,

The full list of keyword arguments available for regex matching rules includes:

• partial: Whether partial matches should be extended to existing span boundaries in doc or not, i.e. the regex only matches part of a token or span. Default is True.
• predef: Whether the regex string should be interpreted as a key to a predefined regex pattern or not. Default is False. The included regexes are:
  • "dates"
  • "times"
  • "phones"
  • "phones_with_exts"
  • "links"
  • "emails"
  • "ips"
  • "ipv6s"
  • "prices"
  • "hex_colors"
  • "credit_cards"
  • "btc_addresses"
  • "street_addresses"
  • "zip_codes"
  • "po_boxes"
  • "ssn_number"

The above patterns are the same that the commonregex package provides.

SpaczzRuler

The spaczz ruler combines the fuzzy matcher and regex matcher into one pipeline component that can update a docs entities similar to spaCy's entity ruler.

Patterns must be added as an iterable of dictionaries in the format of {label (str), pattern(str), type(str), optional kwargs (dict), and optional id (str)}.

For example:

{"label": "ORG", "pattern": "Apple", "type": "fuzzy", "kwargs": {"ignore_case": False}, "id": "TECH"}

import spacy
from spaczz.pipeline import SpaczzRuler

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

patterns = [
    {"label": "NAME", "pattern": "Grant Andersen", "type": "fuzzy", "kwargs": {"fuzzy_func": "token_sort"}},
    {"label": "STREET", "pattern": "street_addresses", "type": "regex", "kwargs": {"predef": True}},
    {"label": "GPE", "pattern": "Nashville", "type": "fuzzy"},
    {"label": "ZIP", "pattern": r"\b(?:55554){s<=1}(?:(?:[-\s])?\d{4}\b)", "type": "regex"}, # fuzzy regex
    {"label": "GPE", "pattern": "(?i)[U](nited|\.?) ?[S](tates|\.?)", "type": "regex"}
]

ruler = SpaczzRuler(nlp)
ruler.add_patterns(patterns)
doc = ruler(doc)

for ent in doc.ents:
    print((ent.text, ent.start, ent.end, ent.label_))

('Anderson, Grint', 0, 3, 'NAME')
('555 Fake St,', 9, 13, 'STREET')
('Nashv1le', 17, 18, 'GPE')
('55555-1234', 20, 23, 'ZIP')
('USA', 25, 26, 'GPE')

Saving/Loading

The SpaczzRuler has it's own to/from disk/bytes methods and will accept cfg parameters passed to spacy.load(). It also has it's own spaCy factory entry point so spaCy is aware of the SpaczzRuler. Below is an example of saving and loading a spacy pipeline with the small English model, the EntityRuler, and the SpaczzRuler.

import spacy
from spaczz.pipeline import SpaczzRuler

nlp = spacy.load("en_core_web_sm")
text = """Anderson, Grint created spaczz in his home at 555 Fake St,
Apt 5 in Nashv1le, TN 55555-1234 in the USA.""" # Spelling errors intentional.
doc = nlp(text)

for ent in doc.ents:
    print((ent.text, ent.start, ent.end, ent.label_))

('Anderson', 0, 1, 'ORG')
('Grint', 2, 3, 'ORG')
('spaczz', 4, 5, 'GPE')
('555', 9, 10, 'CARDINAL')
('Fake St', 10, 12, 'PERSON')
('5', 15, 16, 'CARDINAL')
('TN', 19, 20, 'ORG')
('55555-1234', 20, 23, 'DATE')
('USA', 25, 26, 'GPE')

While spaCy does a decent job of identifying that named entities are present in this example, we can definitely improve the matches - particularly with the kind of labels applied.

Let's add an entity ruler for some rules-based matches.

from spacy.pipeline import EntityRuler

entity_ruler = EntityRuler(nlp)
entity_ruler.add_patterns([
    {"label": "GPE", "pattern": "Nashville"},
    {"label": "GPE", "pattern": "TN"}
])

nlp.add_pipe(entity_ruler, before="ner")
doc = nlp(text)

for ent in doc.ents:
    print((ent.text, ent.start, ent.end, ent.label_))

('Anderson', 0, 1, 'ORG')
('Grint', 2, 3, 'ORG')
('spaczz', 4, 5, 'GPE')
('555', 9, 10, 'CARDINAL')
('Fake St', 10, 12, 'PERSON')
('5', 15, 16, 'CARDINAL')
('TN', 19, 20, 'GPE')
('55555-1234', 20, 23, 'DATE')
('USA', 25, 26, 'GPE')

We're making progress, but Nashville is spelled wrong in the text so the entity ruler does not find it, and we still have other entities to fix/find.

Let's add a spaczz ruler to round this pipeline out.

spaczz_ruler = nlp.create_pipe("spaczz_ruler") # Works due to spaCy factory entry point.
spaczz_ruler.add_patterns([
    {"label": "NAME", "pattern": "Grant Andersen", "type": "fuzzy", "kwargs": {"fuzzy_func": "token_sort"}},
    {"label": "STREET", "pattern": "street_addresses", "type": "regex", "kwargs": {"predef": True}},
    {"label": "GPE", "pattern": "Nashville", "type": "fuzzy"},
    {"label": "ZIP", "pattern": r"\b(?:55554){s<=1}(?:[-\s]\d{4})?\b", "type": "regex"}, # fuzzy regex
])
nlp.add_pipe(spaczz_ruler, before="ner")
doc = nlp(text)

for ent in doc.ents:
    print((ent.text, ent.start, ent.end, ent.label_))

('Anderson, Grint', 0, 3, 'NAME')
('spaczz', 4, 5, 'GPE')
('555 Fake St,', 9, 13, 'STREET')
('5', 15, 16, 'CARDINAL')
('Nashv1le', 17, 18, 'GPE')
('TN', 19, 20, 'GPE')
('55555-1234', 20, 23, 'ZIP')
('USA', 25, 26, 'GPE')

Awesome! The small English model still identifes "spaczz" as a GPE entity, but we're satisfied overall.

Let's save this pipeline to disk and make sure we can load it back correctly.

nlp.to_disk("./example")
nlp = spacy.load("./example")
nlp.pipe_names

['tagger', 'parser', 'entity_ruler', 'spaczz_ruler', 'ner']

We can even ensure all the spaczz ruler patterns are still present.

spaczz_ruler = nlp.get_pipe("spaczz_ruler")
spaczz_ruler.patterns

[{'label': 'NAME',
  'pattern': 'Grant Andersen',
  'type': 'fuzzy',
  'kwargs': {'fuzzy_func': 'token_sort'}},
 {'label': 'GPE', 'pattern': 'Nashville', 'type': 'fuzzy'},
 {'label': 'STREET',
  'pattern': 'street_addresses',
  'type': 'regex',
  'kwargs': {'predef': True}},
 {'label': 'ZIP',
  'pattern': '\\b(?:55554){s<=1}(?:[-\\s]\\d{4})?\\b',
  'type': 'regex'}]

Limitations

Spaczz is written in pure Python and it's matchers do not currently utilize spaCy lanuage vocabularies, which means following it's logic should be easy to those familiar with Python. However, this means spaczz components will run slower and likely consume more memory than their spaCy counterparts, especially as more patterns are added and documents get longer. It is therefore recommended to use spaCy components like the EntityRuler for entities that with little uncertainty, like spelling errors. Use spaczz components when there are not viable spaCy alternatives.

Future State

1. API support for adding user-defined regexes to the predefined regex.
   1. Saving these additional predefined regexes as part of the SpaczzRuler will also be supported.
2. Entity start/end trimming on the token level to prevent fuzzy matches from starting/ending with unwanted tokens, i.e. spaces/punctuation. Will support similar options as spaCy's matcher.

Wishful thinking:

1. Having the fuzzy/regex matchers utilize spaCy vocabularies.
2. Rewrite the fuzzy searching algorithm in Cython to utilize C speed.
3. Fuzzy matching with token patterns along with phrase patterns.

Development

Pull requests and contributors are welcome.

spaczz is linted with Flake8, formatted with Black, type-checked with MyPy (although this could benefit from improved specificity), tested with Pytest, automated with Nox, and built/packaged with Poetry. There are a few other development tools detailed in the noxfile.py, along with Git pre-commit hooks.

To contribute to spaczz's development fork the repository then install spaczz and it's dev dependencies with Poetry. If you're interested in being a regular contributor please contact me directly.

poetry install # Within spaczz's root directory.

References

• Spaczz tries to stay as close to spaCy's API as possible. Whenever it made sense to use existing spaCy code within spaczz this was done.
• Fuzzy matching is currently performed using RapidFuzz.
• Regexes are performed using the regex library.
• The search algorithm for fuzzy matching was heavily influnced by Stack Overflow user Ulf Aslak's answer in this thread.
• Spaczz's predefined regex patterns were borrowed from the commonregex package.
• Spaczz's development and CI/CD patterns were inspired by Claudio Jolowicz's Hypermodern Python article series.