spaCy/website/usage/v2.jade

//- 💫 DOCS > USAGE > WHAT'S NEW IN V2.0

include ../_includes/_mixins

p
    |  We're very excited to finally introduce spaCy v2.0! On this page, you'll
    |  find a summary of the new features, information on the backwards
    |  incompatibilities, including a handy overview of what's been renamed or
    |  deprecated. To help you make the most of v2.0, we also
    |  #[strong re-wrote almost all of the usage guides and API docs], and added
    |  more real-world examples. If you're new to spaCy, or just want to brush
    |  up on some NLP basics and the details of the library, check out
    |  the #[+a("/usage/spacy-101") spaCy 101 guide] that explains the most
    |  important concepts with examples and illustrations.

+h(2, "summary") Summary

+grid.o-no-block
    +grid-col("half")

        p This release features
            |  entirely new #[strong deep learning-powered models] for spaCy's tagger,
            |  parser and entity recognizer. The new models are #[strong 20x smaller]
            |  than the linear models that have powered spaCy until now: from 300 MB to
            |  only 15 MB.

        p
            |  We've also made several usability improvements that are
            |  particularly helpful for #[strong production deployments]. spaCy
            |  v2 now fully supports the Pickle protocol, making it easy to use
            |  spaCy with #[+a("https://spark.apache.org/") Apache Spark]. The
            |  string-to-integer mapping is #[strong no longer stateful], making
            |  it easy to reconcile annotations made in different processes.
            |  Models are smaller and use less memory, and the APIs for serialization
            |  are now much more consistent.

    +table-of-contents
        +item #[+a("#summary") Summary]
        +item #[+a("#features") New features]
        +item #[+a("#features-models") Neural network models]
        +item #[+a("#features-pipelines") Improved processing pipelines]
        +item #[+a("#features-text-classification") Text classification]
        +item #[+a("#features-hash-ids") Hash values instead of integer IDs]
        +item #[+a("#features-serializer") Saving, loading and serialization]
        +item #[+a("#features-displacy") displaCy visualizer]
        +item #[+a("#features-language") Language data and lazy loading]
        +item #[+a("#features-matcher") Revised matcher API and phrase matcher]
        +item #[+a("#incompat") Backwards incompatibilities]
        +item #[+a("#migrating") Migrating from spaCy v1.x]
        +item #[+a("#benchmarks") Benchmarks]

p
    |  The main usability improvements you'll notice in spaCy v2.0 are around
    |  #[strong defining, training and loading your own models] and components.
    |  The new neural network models make it much easier to train a model from
    |  scratch, or update an existing model with a few examples. In v1.x, the
    |  statistical models depended on the state of the #[code Vocab]. If you
    |  taught the model a new word, you would have to save and load a lot of
    |  data — otherwise the model wouldn't correctly recall the features of your
    |  new example. That's no longer the case.

p
    |  Due to some clever use of hashing, the statistical models
    |  #[strong never change size], even as they learn new vocabulary items.
    |  The whole pipeline is also now fully differentiable. Even if you don't
    |  have explicitly annotated data, you can update spaCy using all the
    |  #[strong latest deep learning tricks] like adversarial training, noise
    |  contrastive estimation or reinforcement learning.

+section("features")
    +h(2, "features") New features

    p
        |  This section contains an overview of the most important
        |  #[strong new features and improvements]. The #[+a("/api") API docs]
        |  include additional  deprecation notes. New methods and functions that
        |  were introduced in this version are marked with a #[+tag-new(2)] tag.

    +h(3, "features-models") Convolutional neural network models

    +aside-code("Example", "bash").
        spacy download en # default English model
        spacy download de # default German model
        spacy download fr # default French model
        spacy download es # default Spanish model
        spacy download xx_ent_wiki_sm # multi-language NER

    p
        |  spaCy v2.0 features new neural models for tagging,
        |  parsing and entity recognition. The models have
        |  been designed and implemented from scratch specifically for spaCy, to
        |  give you an unmatched balance of speed, size and accuracy. The new
        |  models are #[strong 10× smaller], #[strong 20% more accurate],
        |  and #[strong just as fast] as the previous generation.
        |  #[strong GPU usage] is now supported via
        |  #[+a("http://chainer.org") Chainer]'s CuPy module.

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/models") Models directory],
        |  #[+a("/usage/#gpu") Using spaCy with GPU]

    +h(3, "features-pipelines") Improved processing pipelines

    +aside-code("Example").
        # Set custom attributes
        Doc.set_extension('my_attr', default=False)
        Token.set_extension('my_attr', getter=my_token_getter)
        assert doc._.my_attr, token._.my_attr

        # Add components to the pipeline
        my_component = lambda doc: doc
        nlp.add_pipe(my_component)

    p
        |  It's now much easier to #[strong customise the pipeline] with your own
        |  components: functions that receive a #[code Doc] object, modify and
        |  return it. Extensions let you write any
        |  #[strong attributes, properties and methods] to the #[code Doc],
        |  #[code Token] and #[code Span]. You can add data, implement new
        |  features, integrate other libraries with spaCy or plug in your own
        |  machine learning models.

    +image
        include ../assets/img/pipeline.svg

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("language") #[code Language]],
        |  #[+api("doc#set_extension") #[code Doc.set_extension]],
        |  #[+api("span#set_extension") #[code Span.set_extension]],
        |  #[+api("token#set_extension") #[code Token.set_extension]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:]
        |  #[+a("/usage/processing-pipelines") Processing pipelines]
        |  #[+label-inline Code:]
        |  #[+src("/usage/examples#section-pipeline") Pipeline examples]

    +h(3, "features-text-classification") Text classification

    +aside-code("Example").
        from spacy.lang.en import English
        nlp = English(pipeline=['tensorizer', 'tagger', 'textcat'])

    p
        |  spaCy v2.0 lets you add text categorization models to spaCy pipelines.
        |  The model supports classification with multiple, non-mutually exclusive
        |  labels – so multiple labels can apply at once. You can change the model
        |  architecture rather easily, but by default, the #[code TextCategorizer]
        |  class uses a convolutional neural network to assign position-sensitive
        |  vectors to each word in the document.

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("textcategorizer") #[code TextCategorizer]],
        |  #[+api("doc#attributes") #[code Doc.cats]],
        |  #[+api("goldparse#attributes") #[code GoldParse.cats]]#[br]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/text-classification") Text classification]

    +h(3, "features-hash-ids") Hash values instead of integer IDs

    +aside-code("Example").
        doc = nlp(u'I love coffee')
        assert doc.vocab.strings[u'coffee'] == 3197928453018144401
        assert doc.vocab.strings[3197928453018144401] == u'coffee'

        beer_hash = doc.vocab.strings.add(u'beer')
        assert doc.vocab.strings[u'beer'] == beer_hash
        assert doc.vocab.strings[beer_hash] == u'beer'

    p
        |  The #[+api("stringstore") #[code StringStore]] now resolves all strings
        |  to hash values instead of integer IDs. This means that the string-to-int
        |  mapping #[strong no longer depends on the vocabulary state], making a lot
        |  of workflows much simpler, especially during training. Unlike integer IDs
        |  in spaCy v1.x, hash values will #[strong always match] – even across
        |  models. Strings can now be added explicitly using the new
        |  #[+api("stringstore#add") #[code Stringstore.add]] method. A token's hash
        |  is available via #[code token.orth].

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("stringstore") #[code StringStore]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/spacy-101#vocab") Vocab, hashes and lexemes 101]

    +h(3, "features-serializer") Saving, loading and serialization

    +aside-code("Example").
        nlp = spacy.load('en') # shortcut link
        nlp = spacy.load('en_core_web_sm') # package
        nlp = spacy.load('/path/to/en') # unicode path
        nlp = spacy.load(Path('/path/to/en')) # pathlib Path

        nlp.to_disk('/path/to/nlp')
        nlp = English().from_disk('/path/to/nlp')

    p
        |  spay's serialization API has been made consistent across classes and
        |  objects. All container classes, i.e. #[code Language], #[code Doc],
        |  #[code Vocab] and #[code StringStore] now have a #[code to_bytes()],
        |  #[code from_bytes()], #[code to_disk()] and #[code from_disk()] method
        |  that supports the Pickle protocol.

    p
        |  The improved #[code spacy.load] makes loading models easier and more
        |  transparent. You can load a model by supplying its
        |  #[+a("/usage/models#usage") shortcut link], the name of an installed
        |  #[+a("/usage/saving-loading#generating") model package] or a path.
        |  The #[code Language] class to initialise will be determined based on the
        |  model's settings. For a blank language, you can import the class directly,
        |  e.g. #[code from spacy.lang.en import English].

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("spacy#load") #[code spacy.load]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/saving-loading") Saving and loading]

    +h(3, "features-displacy") displaCy visualizer with Jupyter support

    +aside-code("Example").
        from spacy import displacy
        doc = nlp(u'This is a sentence about Facebook.')
        displacy.serve(doc, style='dep') # run the web server
        html = displacy.render(doc, style='ent') # generate HTML

    p
        |  Our popular dependency and named entity visualizers are now an official
        |  part of the spaCy library. displaCy can run a simple web server, or
        |  generate raw HTML markup or SVG files to be exported. You can pass in one
        |  or more docs, and customise the style. displaCy also auto-detects whether
        |  you're running #[+a("https://jupyter.org") Jupyter] and will render the
        |  visualizations in your notebook.

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("displacy") #[code displacy]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/visualizers") Visualizing spaCy]

    +h(3, "features-language") Improved language data and lazy loading

    p
        |  Language-specfic data now lives in its own submodule, #[code spacy.lang].
        |  Languages are lazy-loaded, i.e. only loaded when you import a
        |  #[code Language] class, or load a model that initialises one. This allows
        |  languages to contain more custom data, e.g. lemmatizer lookup tables, or
        |  complex regular expressions. The language data has also been tidied up
        |  and simplified. spaCy now also supports simple lookup-based lemmatization.

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("language") #[code Language]]
        |  #[+label-inline Code:] #[+src(gh("spaCy", "spacy/lang")) #[code spacy/lang]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/adding-languages") Adding languages]

    +h(3, "features-matcher") Revised matcher API and phrase matcher

    +aside-code("Example").
        from spacy.matcher import Matcher, PhraseMatcher

        matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
        matcher.add('HEARTS', None, [{'ORTH': '❤️', 'OP': '+'}])

        phrasematcher = PhraseMatcher(nlp.vocab)
        phrasematcher.add('OBAMA', None, nlp(u"Barack Obama"))

    p
        |  Patterns can now be added to the matcher by calling
        |  #[+api("matcher-add") #[code matcher.add()]] with a match ID, an optional
        |  callback function to be invoked on each match, and one or more patterns.
        |  This allows you to write powerful, pattern-specific logic using only one
        |  matcher. For example, you might only want to merge some entity types,
        |  and set custom flags for other matched patterns. The new
        |  #[+api("phrasematcher") #[code PhraseMatcher]] lets you efficiently
        |  match very large terminology lists using #[code Doc] objects as match
        |  patterns.

    +infobox
        |  #[+label-inline API:] #[+api("matcher") #[code Matcher]],
        |  #[+api("phrasematcher") #[code PhraseMatcher]]
        |  #[+label-inline Usage:] #[+a("/usage/rule-based-matching") Rule-based matching]

+section("incompat")
    +h(2, "incompat") Backwards incompatibilities

    +table(["Old", "New"])
        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code spacy.en]
                |  #[code spacy.xx]
            +cell
                |  #[code spacy.lang.en]
                |  #[code spacy.lang.xx]

        +row
            +cell #[code orth]
            +cell #[code lang.xx.lex_attrs]

        +row
            +cell #[code syntax.iterators]
            +cell #[code lang.xx.syntax_iterators]

        +row
            +cell #[code Language.save_to_directory]
            +cell #[+api("language#to_disk") #[code Language.to_disk]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Language.create_make_doc]
            +cell #[+api("language#attributes") #[code Language.tokenizer]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code Vocab.load]
                |  #[code Vocab.load_lexemes]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("vocab#from_disk") #[code Vocab.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("vocab#from_bytes") #[code Vocab.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code Vocab.dump]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("vocab#to_disk") #[code Vocab.to_disk]]#[br]
                |  #[+api("vocab#to_bytes") #[code Vocab.to_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code Vocab.load_vectors]
                |  #[code Vocab.load_vectors_from_bin_loc]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("vectors#from_disk") #[code Vectors.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("vectors#from_bytes") #[code Vectors.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code Vocab.dump_vectors]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("vectors#to_disk") #[code Vectors.to_disk]]
                |  #[+api("vectors#to_bytes") #[code Vectors.to_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code StringStore.load]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("stringstore#from_disk") #[code StringStore.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("stringstore#from_bytes") #[code StringStore.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code StringStore.dump]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("stringstore#to_disk") #[code StringStore.to_disk]]
                |  #[+api("stringstore#to_bytes") #[code StringStore.to_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Tokenizer.load]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("tokenizer#from_disk") #[code Tokenizer.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("tokenizer#from_bytes") #[code Tokenizer.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Tagger.load]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("tagger#from_disk") #[code Tagger.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("tagger#from_bytes") #[code Tagger.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell #[code DependencyParser.load]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("dependencyparser#from_disk") #[code DependencyParser.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("dependencyparser#from_bytes") #[code DependencyParser.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell #[code EntityRecognizer.load]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("entityrecognizer#from_disk") #[code EntityRecognizer.from_disk]]
                |  #[+api("entityrecognizer#from_bytes") #[code EntityRecognizer.from_bytes]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Matcher.load]
            +cell -

        +row
            +cell
                |  #[code Matcher.add_pattern]
                |  #[code Matcher.add_entity]
            +cell #[+api("matcher#add") #[code Matcher.add]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Matcher.get_entity]
            +cell #[+api("matcher#get") #[code Matcher.get]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Matcher.has_entity]
            +cell #[+api("matcher#contains") #[code Matcher.__contains__]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Doc.read_bytes]
            +cell
                |  #[+api("doc#to_bytes") #[code Doc.to_bytes]]
                |  #[+api("doc#from_bytes") #[code Doc.from_bytes]]
                |  #[+api("doc#to_disk") #[code Doc.to_disk]]
                |  #[+api("doc#from_disk") #[code Doc.from_disk]]

        +row
            +cell #[code Token.is_ancestor_of]
            +cell #[+api("token#is_ancestor") #[code Token.is_ancestor]]

        +row
            +cell #[code cli.model]
            +cell -

+section("migrating")
    +h(2, "migrating") Migrating from spaCy 1.x

    p
        |  Because we'e made so many architectural changes to the library, we've
        |  tried to #[strong keep breaking changes to a minimum]. A lot of projects
        |  follow the philosophy that if you're going to break anything, you may as
        |  well break everything. We think migration is easier if there's a logic to
        |  what has changed.

    p
        |  We've therefore followed a policy of avoiding breaking changes to the
        |  #[code Doc], #[code Span] and #[code Token] objects. This way, you can
        |  focus on only migrating the code that does training, loading and
        |  serialization — in other words, code that works with the #[code nlp]
        |  object directly. Code that uses the annotations should continue to work.

    +infobox("Important note")
        |  If you've trained your own models, keep in mind that your train and
        |  runtime inputs must match. This means you'll have to
        |  #[strong retrain your models] with spaCy v2.0.

    +h(3, "migrating-saving-loading") Saving, loading and serialization

    p
        |  Double-check all calls to #[code spacy.load()] and make sure they don't
        |  use the #[code path] keyword argument. If you're only loading in binary
        |  data and not a model package that can construct its own #[code Language]
        |  class and pipeline, you should now use the
        |  #[+api("language#from_disk") #[code Language.from_disk()]] method.

    +code-new.
        nlp = spacy.load('/model')
        nlp = English().from_disk('/model/data')
    +code-old nlp = spacy.load('en', path='/model')

    p
        |  Review all other code that writes state to disk or bytes.
        |  All containers, now share the same, consistent API for saving and
        |  loading. Replace saving with #[code to_disk()] or #[code to_bytes()], and
        |  loading with #[code from_disk()] and #[code from_bytes()].

    +code-new.
        nlp.to_disk('/model')
        nlp.vocab.to_disk('/vocab')

    +code-old.
        nlp.save_to_directory('/model')
        nlp.vocab.dump('/vocab')

    p
        |  If you've trained models with input from v1.x, you'll need to
        |  #[strong retrain them] with spaCy v2.0. All previous models will not
        |  be compatible with the new version.

    +h(3, "migrating-strings") Strings and hash values

    p
        |  The change from integer IDs to hash values may not actually affect your
        |  code very much. However, if you're adding strings to the vocab manually,
        |  you now need to call #[+api("stringstore#add") #[code StringStore.add()]]
        |  explicitly. You can also now be sure that the string-to-hash mapping will
        |  always match across vocabularies.

    +code-new.
        nlp.vocab.strings.add(u'coffee')
        nlp.vocab.strings[u'coffee']       # 3197928453018144401
        other_nlp.vocab.strings[u'coffee'] # 3197928453018144401

    +code-old.
        nlp.vocab.strings[u'coffee']       # 3672
        other_nlp.vocab.strings[u'coffee'] # 40259

    +h(3, "migrating-languages") Processing pipelines and language data

    p
        |  If you're importing language data or #[code Language] classes, make sure
        |  to change your import statements to import from #[code spacy.lang]. If
        |  you've added your own custom language, it needs to be moved to
        |  #[code spacy/lang/xx] and adjusted accordingly.

    +code-new from spacy.lang.en import English
    +code-old from spacy.en import English

    p
        |  If you've been using custom pipeline components, check out the new
        |  guide on #[+a("/usage/language-processing-pipelines") processing pipelines].
        |  Appending functions to the pipeline still works – but the
        |  #[+api("language#add_pipe") #[code add_pipe]] methods now makes this
        |  much more convenient. Components of the processing pipeline can now
        |  be disabled by passing a list of their names to the #[code disable]
        |  keyword argument on load, or by simply demoving them from the
        |  pipeline alltogether.

    +code-new.
        nlp = spacy.load('en', disable=['tagger', 'ner'])
        nlp.remove_pipe('parser')
    +code-old.
        nlp = spacy.load('en', tagger=False, entity=False)
        doc = nlp(u"I don't want parsed", parse=False)

    +h(3, "migrating-matcher") Adding patterns and callbacks to the matcher

    p
        |  If you're using the matcher, you can now add patterns in one step. This
        |  should be easy to update – simply merge the ID, callback and patterns
        |  into one call to #[+api("matcher#add") #[code Matcher.add()]].

    +code-new.
        matcher.add('GoogleNow', merge_phrases, [{ORTH: 'Google'}, {ORTH: 'Now'}])

    +code-old.
        matcher.add_entity('GoogleNow', on_match=merge_phrases)
        matcher.add_pattern('GoogleNow', [{ORTH: 'Google'}, {ORTH: 'Now'}])

    p
        |  If you've been using #[strong acceptor functions], you'll need to move
        |  this logic into the
        |  #[+a("/usage/rule-based-matching#on_match") #[code on_match] callbacks].
        |  The callback function is invoked on every match and will give you access to
        |  the doc, the index of the current match and all total matches. This lets
        |  you both accept or reject the match, and define the actions to be
        |  triggered.

+section("benchmarks")
    +h(2, "benchmarks") Benchmarks

    include _facts-figures/_benchmarks-models