spaCy/website/docs/api/entitylinker.md

title	tag	source	new	teaser	api_base_class	api_string_name	api_trainable
EntityLinker	class	spacy/pipeline/entity_linker.py	2.2	Pipeline component for named entity linking and disambiguation	/api/pipe	entity_linker	true

An EntityLinker component disambiguates textual mentions (tagged as named entities) to unique identifiers, grounding the named entities into the "real world". It requires a KnowledgeBase, as well as a function to generate plausible candidates from that KnowledgeBase given a certain textual mention, and a machine learning model to pick the right candidate, given the local context of the mention.

Assigned Attributes

Predictions, in the form of knowledge base IDs, will be assigned to Token.ent_kb_id_.

Location	Value
Token.ent_kb_id	Knowledge base ID (hash). int
Token.ent_kb_id_	Knowledge base ID. str

Config and implementation

The default config is defined by the pipeline component factory and describes how the component should be configured. You can override its settings via the config argument on nlp.add_pipe or in your config.cfg for training. See the model architectures documentation for details on the architectures and their arguments and hyperparameters.

Example

from spacy.pipeline.entity_linker import DEFAULT_NEL_MODEL
config = {
   "labels_discard": [],
   "n_sents": 0,
   "incl_prior": True,
   "incl_context": True,
   "model": DEFAULT_NEL_MODEL,
   "entity_vector_length": 64,
   "get_candidates": {'@misc': 'spacy.CandidateGenerator.v1'},
   "threshold": None,
}
nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker", config=config)

Setting	Description
labels_discard	NER labels that will automatically get a "NIL" prediction. Defaults to []. Iterable[str]
n_sents	The number of neighbouring sentences to take into account. Defaults to 0. int
incl_prior	Whether or not to include prior probabilities from the KB in the model. Defaults to True. bool
incl_context	Whether or not to include the local context in the model. Defaults to True. bool
model	The Model powering the pipeline component. Defaults to EntityLinker. Model
entity_vector_length	Size of encoding vectors in the KB. Defaults to 64. int
use_gold_ents	Whether to copy entities from the gold docs or not. Defaults to True. If False, entities must be set in the training data or by an annotating component in the pipeline. int
get_candidates	Function that generates plausible candidates for a given Span object. Defaults to CandidateGenerator, a function looking up exact, case-dependent aliases in the KB. CallableKnowledgeBase, Span], Iterable[Candidate
overwrite 3.2	Whether existing annotation is overwritten. Defaults to True. bool
scorer 3.2	The scoring method. Defaults to Scorer.score_links. Optional[Callable]
save_activations 4.0	Save activations in Doc when annotating. Saved activations are "ents" and "scores". Union[bool, list[str]]
threshold 3.4	Confidence threshold for entity predictions. The default of None implies that all predictions are accepted, otherwise those with a score beneath the treshold are discarded. If there are no predictions with scores above the threshold, the linked entity is NIL. Optional[float]

%%GITHUB_SPACY/spacy/pipeline/entity_linker.py

EntityLinker.__init__

Example

# Construction via add_pipe with default model
entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")

# Construction via add_pipe with custom model
config = {"model": {"@architectures": "my_el.v1"}}
entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker", config=config)

# Construction from class
from spacy.pipeline import EntityLinker
entity_linker = EntityLinker(nlp.vocab, model)

Create a new pipeline instance. In your application, you would normally use a shortcut for this and instantiate the component using its string name and nlp.add_pipe.

Upon construction of the entity linker component, an empty knowledge base is constructed with the provided entity_vector_length. If you want to use a custom knowledge base, you should either call set_kb or provide a kb_loader in the initialize call.

Name	Description
vocab	The shared vocabulary. Vocab
model	The Model powering the pipeline component. Model
name	String name of the component instance. Used to add entries to the losses during training. str
keyword-only
entity_vector_length	Size of encoding vectors in the KB. int
get_candidates	Function that generates plausible candidates for a given Span object. CallableKnowledgeBase, Span], Iterable[Candidate
labels_discard	NER labels that will automatically get a "NIL" prediction. Iterable[str]
n_sents	The number of neighbouring sentences to take into account. int
incl_prior	Whether or not to include prior probabilities from the KB in the model. bool
incl_context	Whether or not to include the local context in the model. bool
overwrite 3.2	Whether existing annotation is overwritten. Defaults to True. bool
scorer 3.2	The scoring method. Defaults to Scorer.score_links. Optional[Callable]
threshold 3.4	Confidence threshold for entity predictions. The default of None implies that all predictions are accepted, otherwise those with a score beneath the treshold are discarded. If there are no predictions with scores above the threshold, the linked entity is NIL. Optional[float]

EntityLinker.__call__

Apply the pipe to one document. The document is modified in place and returned. This usually happens under the hood when the nlp object is called on a text and all pipeline components are applied to the Doc in order. Both __call__ and pipe delegate to the predict and set_annotations methods.

Example

doc = nlp("This is a sentence.")
entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
# This usually happens under the hood
processed = entity_linker(doc)

Name	Description
doc	The document to process. Doc
RETURNS	The processed document. Doc

EntityLinker.pipe

Apply the pipe to a stream of documents. This usually happens under the hood when the nlp object is called on a text and all pipeline components are applied to the Doc in order. Both __call__ and pipe delegate to the predict and set_annotations methods.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
for doc in entity_linker.pipe(docs, batch_size=50):
    pass

Name	Description
stream	A stream of documents. Iterable[Doc]
keyword-only
batch_size	The number of documents to buffer. Defaults to 128. int
YIELDS	The processed documents in order. Doc

EntityLinker.set_kb

The kb_loader should be a function that takes a Vocab instance and creates the KnowledgeBase, ensuring that the strings of the knowledge base are synced with the current vocab.

Example

def create_kb(vocab):
    kb = KnowledgeBase(vocab, entity_vector_length=128)
    kb.add_entity(...)
    kb.add_alias(...)
    return kb
entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker.set_kb(create_kb)

Name	Description
kb_loader	Function that creates a KnowledgeBase from a Vocab instance. Callable[[Vocab], KnowledgeBase]

EntityLinker.initialize

Initialize the component for training. get_examples should be a function that returns an iterable of Example objects. At least one example should be supplied. The data examples are used to initialize the model of the component and can either be the full training data or a representative sample. Initialization includes validating the network, inferring missing shapes and setting up the label scheme based on the data. This method is typically called by Language.initialize.

Optionally, a kb_loader argument may be specified to change the internal knowledge base. This argument should be a function that takes a Vocab instance and creates the KnowledgeBase, ensuring that the strings of the knowledge base are synced with the current vocab.

This method was previously called begin_training.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker.initialize(lambda: examples, nlp=nlp, kb_loader=my_kb)

Name	Description
get_examples	Function that returns gold-standard annotations in the form of Example objects. Must contain at least one Example. Callable], Iterable[Example
keyword-only
nlp	The current nlp object. Defaults to None. Optional[Language]
kb_loader	Function that creates a KnowledgeBase from a Vocab instance. Callable[[Vocab], KnowledgeBase]

EntityLinker.predict

Apply the component's model to a batch of Doc objects, without modifying them. Returns the KB IDs for each entity in each doc, including NIL if there is no prediction.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
kb_ids = entity_linker.predict([doc1, doc2])

Name	Description
docs	The documents to predict. Iterable[Doc]
RETURNS	The predicted KB identifiers for the entities in the docs. List[str]

EntityLinker.set_annotations

Modify a batch of documents, using pre-computed entity IDs for a list of named entities.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
kb_ids = entity_linker.predict([doc1, doc2])
entity_linker.set_annotations([doc1, doc2], kb_ids)

Name	Description
docs	The documents to modify. Iterable[Doc]
kb_ids	The knowledge base identifiers for the entities in the docs, predicted by EntityLinker.predict. List[str]

EntityLinker.update

Learn from a batch of Example objects, updating both the pipe's entity linking model and context encoder. Delegates to predict.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
optimizer = nlp.initialize()
losses = entity_linker.update(examples, sgd=optimizer)

Name	Description
examples	A batch of Example objects to learn from. Iterable[Example]
keyword-only
drop	The dropout rate. float
sgd	An optimizer. Will be created via create_optimizer if not set. Optional[Optimizer]
losses	Optional record of the loss during training. Updated using the component name as the key. Optional[Dict[str, float]]
RETURNS	The updated losses dictionary. Dict[str, float]

EntityLinker.create_optimizer

Create an optimizer for the pipeline component.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
optimizer = entity_linker.create_optimizer()

Name	Description
RETURNS	The optimizer. Optimizer

EntityLinker.use_params

Modify the pipe's model, to use the given parameter values. At the end of the context, the original parameters are restored.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
with entity_linker.use_params(optimizer.averages):
    entity_linker.to_disk("/best_model")

Name	Description
params	The parameter values to use in the model. dict

EntityLinker.to_disk

Serialize the pipe to disk.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker.to_disk("/path/to/entity_linker")

Name	Description
path	A path to a directory, which will be created if it doesn't exist. Paths may be either strings or Path-like objects. Union[str, Path]
keyword-only
exclude	String names of serialization fields to exclude. Iterable[str]

EntityLinker.from_disk

Load the pipe from disk. Modifies the object in place and returns it.

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker.from_disk("/path/to/entity_linker")

Name	Description
path	A path to a directory. Paths may be either strings or Path-like objects. Union[str, Path]
keyword-only
exclude	String names of serialization fields to exclude. Iterable[str]
RETURNS	The modified EntityLinker object. EntityLinker

EntityLinker.to_bytes

Example

entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker_bytes = entity_linker.to_bytes()

Serialize the pipe to a bytestring, including the KnowledgeBase.

Name	Description
keyword-only
exclude	String names of serialization fields to exclude. Iterable[str]
RETURNS	The serialized form of the EntityLinker object. bytes

EntityLinker.from_bytes

Load the pipe from a bytestring. Modifies the object in place and returns it.

Example

entity_linker_bytes = entity_linker.to_bytes()
entity_linker = nlp.add_pipe("entity_linker")
entity_linker.from_bytes(entity_linker_bytes)

Name	Description
bytes_data	The data to load from. bytes
keyword-only
exclude	String names of serialization fields to exclude. Iterable[str]
RETURNS	The EntityLinker object. EntityLinker

Serialization fields

During serialization, spaCy will export several data fields used to restore different aspects of the object. If needed, you can exclude them from serialization by passing in the string names via the exclude argument.

Example

data = entity_linker.to_disk("/path", exclude=["vocab"])

Name	Description
vocab	The shared Vocab.
cfg	The config file. You usually don't want to exclude this.
model	The binary model data. You usually don't want to exclude this.
kb	The knowledge base. You usually don't want to exclude this.