spaCy/website/docs/api/matcher.md
Adriane Boyd c771ec22f0 Update matcher errors and docs
* Mention `tagger+attribute_ruler` in `POS`/`MORPH` error messages for
`Matcher` and `PhraseMatcher`
* Document `Matcher.__call__(allow_missing=)`
2021-03-19 10:11:18 +01:00

14 KiB

title teaser tag source
Matcher Match sequences of tokens, based on pattern rules class spacy/matcher/matcher.pyx

The Matcher lets you find words and phrases using rules describing their token attributes. Rules can refer to token annotations (like the text or part-of-speech tags), as well as lexical attributes like Token.is_punct. Applying the matcher to a Doc gives you access to the matched tokens in context. For in-depth examples and workflows for combining rules and statistical models, see the usage guide on rule-based matching.

Pattern format

### Example
[
  {"LOWER": "i"},
  {"LEMMA": {"IN": ["like", "love"]}},
  {"POS": "NOUN", "OP": "+"}
]

A pattern added to the Matcher consists of a list of dictionaries. Each dictionary describes one token and its attributes. The available token pattern keys correspond to a number of Token attributes. The supported attributes for rule-based matching are:

Attribute  Description
ORTH The exact verbatim text of a token. str
TEXT 2.1 The exact verbatim text of a token. str
LOWER The lowercase form of the token text. str
 LENGTH The length of the token text. int
 IS_ALPHA, IS_ASCII, IS_DIGIT Token text consists of alphabetic characters, ASCII characters, digits. bool
 IS_LOWER, IS_UPPER, IS_TITLE Token text is in lowercase, uppercase, titlecase. bool
 IS_PUNCT, IS_SPACE, IS_STOP Token is punctuation, whitespace, stop word. bool
 IS_SENT_START Token is start of sentence. bool
 LIKE_NUM, LIKE_URL, LIKE_EMAIL Token text resembles a number, URL, email. bool
SPACY Token has a trailing space. bool
 POS, TAG, MORPH, DEP, LEMMA, SHAPE The token's simple and extended part-of-speech tag, morphological analysis, dependency label, lemma, shape. str
ENT_TYPE The token's entity label. str
_ 2.1 Properties in custom extension attributes. Dict[str, Any]
OP Operator or quantifier to determine how often to match a token pattern. str

Operators and quantifiers define how often a token pattern should be matched:

### Example
[
  {"POS": "ADJ", "OP": "*"},
  {"POS": "NOUN", "OP": "+"}
]
OP Description
! Negate the pattern, by requiring it to match exactly 0 times.
? Make the pattern optional, by allowing it to match 0 or 1 times.
+ Require the pattern to match 1 or more times.
* Allow the pattern to match 0 or more times.

Token patterns can also map to a dictionary of properties instead of a single value to indicate whether the expected value is a member of a list or how it compares to another value.

### Example
[
  {"LEMMA": {"IN": ["like", "love", "enjoy"]}},
  {"POS": "PROPN", "LENGTH": {">=": 10}},
]
Attribute Description
IN Attribute value is member of a list. Any
NOT_IN Attribute value is not member of a list. Any
ISSUBSET Attribute values (for MORPH) are a subset of a list. Any
ISSUPERSET Attribute values (for MORPH) are a superset of a list. Any
==, >=, <=, >, < Attribute value is equal, greater or equal, smaller or equal, greater or smaller. Union[int, float]

Matcher.__init__

Create the rule-based Matcher. If validate=True is set, all patterns added to the matcher will be validated against a JSON schema and a MatchPatternError is raised if problems are found. Those can include incorrect types (e.g. a string where an integer is expected) or unexpected property names.

Example

from spacy.matcher import Matcher
matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
Name Description
vocab The vocabulary object, which must be shared with the documents the matcher will operate on. Vocab
validate 2.1 Validate all patterns added to this matcher. bool

Matcher.__call__

Find all token sequences matching the supplied patterns on the Doc or Span.

Example

from spacy.matcher import Matcher

matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
pattern = [{"LOWER": "hello"}, {"LOWER": "world"}]
matcher.add("HelloWorld", [pattern])
doc = nlp("hello world!")
matches = matcher(doc)
Name Description
doclike The Doc or Span to match over. Union[Doc, Span]
keyword-only
as_spans 3 Instead of tuples, return a list of Span objects of the matches, with the match_id assigned as the span label. Defaults to False. bool
allow_missing 3 Whether to skip checks for missing annotation for attributes included in patterns. Defaults to False. bool
RETURNS A list of (match_id, start, end) tuples, describing the matches. A match tuple describes a span doc[start:end]. The match_id is the ID of the added match pattern. If as_spans is set to True, a list of Span objects is returned instead. Union[List[Tuple[int, int, int]], List[Span]]

Matcher.__len__

Get the number of rules added to the matcher. Note that this only returns the number of rules (identical with the number of IDs), not the number of individual patterns.

Example

matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
assert len(matcher) == 0
matcher.add("Rule", [[{"ORTH": "test"}]])
assert len(matcher) == 1
Name Description
RETURNS The number of rules. int

Matcher.__contains__

Check whether the matcher contains rules for a match ID.

Example

matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
assert "Rule" not in matcher
matcher.add("Rule", [[{'ORTH': 'test'}]])
assert "Rule" in matcher
Name Description
key The match ID. str
RETURNS Whether the matcher contains rules for this match ID. bool

Matcher.add

Add a rule to the matcher, consisting of an ID key, one or more patterns, and an optional callback function to act on the matches. The callback function will receive the arguments matcher, doc, i and matches. If a pattern already exists for the given ID, the patterns will be extended. An on_match callback will be overwritten.

Example

def on_match(matcher, doc, id, matches):
    print('Matched!', matches)

matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab)
patterns = [
   [{"LOWER": "hello"}, {"LOWER": "world"}],
   [{"ORTH": "Google"}, {"ORTH": "Maps"}]
]
matcher.add("TEST_PATTERNS", patterns)
doc = nlp("HELLO WORLD on Google Maps.")
matches = matcher(doc)

As of spaCy v3.0, Matcher.add takes a list of patterns as the second argument (instead of a variable number of arguments). The on_match callback becomes an optional keyword argument.

patterns = [[{"TEXT": "Google"}, {"TEXT": "Now"}], [{"TEXT": "GoogleNow"}]]
- matcher.add("GoogleNow", on_match, *patterns)
+ matcher.add("GoogleNow", patterns, on_match=on_match)
Name Description
match_id An ID for the thing you're matching. str
patterns Match pattern. A pattern consists of a list of dicts, where each dict describes a token. List[List[Dict[str, Any]]]
keyword-only
on_match Callback function to act on matches. Takes the arguments matcher, doc, i and matches. Optional[CallableMatcher, Doc, int, List[tuple], Any
greedy 3 Optional filter for greedy matches. Can either be "FIRST" or "LONGEST". Optional[str]

Matcher.remove

Remove a rule from the matcher. A KeyError is raised if the match ID does not exist.

Example

matcher.add("Rule", [[{"ORTH": "test"}]])
assert "Rule" in matcher
matcher.remove("Rule")
assert "Rule" not in matcher
Name Description
key The ID of the match rule. str

Matcher.get

Retrieve the pattern stored for a key. Returns the rule as an (on_match, patterns) tuple containing the callback and available patterns.

Example

matcher.add("Rule", [[{"ORTH": "test"}]])
on_match, patterns = matcher.get("Rule")
Name Description
key The ID of the match rule. str
RETURNS The rule, as an (on_match, patterns) tuple. Tuple[Optional[Callable], List[List[dict]]]