SLING Python API

A number of components in SLING can be accessed through the Python SLING API. You can install the SLING Python wheel using pip:

sudo -H pip3 install http://www.jbox.dk/sling/sling-2.0.0-py3-none-linux_x86_64.whl

or you can clone the repo and build SLING from sources.

Frame stores

The SLING frame store can be used from Python. See the SLING Frames Guide for an introduction to semantic frames and the SLING frame store concepts.

SLING frames live in a store, so you create a new global store this way:

import sling
commons = sling.Store()

Loading frames into the store:

commons.load("data/nlp/schemas/meta-schema.sling")
commons.load("data/nlp/schemas/document-schema.sling")

Loading binary encoded frames in legacy encoding:

actions = commons.load("local/sempar/out/table", binary=True)

Freezing a store makes it read-only and allows local stores to be created based on the store:

commons.freeze()

Looking up frames in the store:

name = commons['name']

Create a local store:

store = sling.Store(commons)

Frames in the global store are now accessible from the local store:

doc = store['document']

Role values for frames can be accessed as attributes:

print(doc.name)

or using indexing:

print(doc['name'])

You can also use a frame value to access roles:

print(doc[name])

You can test if a frame has a role:

if 'name' in doc: print("doc has 'name'")
if name in doc: print("doc has name")

You can iterate over all the named frames (i.e. frames with an id: slot) in a store:

for f in store: print(f.id)

The parse() method can be used for adding new frames to the store:

f = store.parse('{a:10 b:10.5 c:"hello" d:{:thing} e:[1,2,3]}')

The frame() method can be used to create a new frame from a dictionary:

f = store.frame({'a': 10, 'b': 10.5, 'c': "hello"})

or a list of slot tuples:

f = store.frame([('a', 10), ('b': 10.5), ('c': "hello")])

or just an id string:

f = store.frame("frame_id")

Slots can be added or modified using attribute assignment:

f.c = "hello world"

or using index assignment:

f[name] = "The F frame"
f['a'] = 20

New slots can be added using the append() method:

f.d.append(name, "A thing")

Multiple slots can be added using the extend() method:

f.extend({'foo': 10, 'bar': 20})

or using a list of slot tuples:

f.extend([('foo', 10), ('bar': 20)])

All the slots in a frame can be iterated:

for name, value in f:
  print("slot", name,"=", value)

or just the roles with a particular name:

for r in doc('role'):
  print("doc role", r)

Frames can be encoded in text format with the data() method:

print(f.data())

and with indentation:

print(f.data(pretty=True))

or with binary encoding:

print(len(f.data(binary=True)))

Arrays can be created with the array() method:

a = store.array([1, 2, 3])

Arrays can also be created with nil values that can be assigned later:

a = store.array(3)
a[0] = 1
a[1] = 2
a[2] = 3

SLING arrays work much in the same way as Python lists except that they have a fixed size:

print(len(a))
print(a[1])
for item in a: print(item)

Finally, a store can be save to a file in textual encoding:

store.save("/tmp/txt.sling")

or in binary encoding:

store.save("/tmp/bin.sling", binary=True)

Record files

Record files are files with variable-size records each having a key and a value. Individual records are (optionally) compressed and records are stored in chunks which can be read independently. The default chunk size is 64 MB.

A RecordReader is used for reading records from a record file and supports iteration over all the records in the record file:

import sling

recin = sling.RecordReader("test.rec")
for key,value in recin:
  print(key, value)
recin.close()

The RecordReader class has the following methods:

__init__(filename[, bufsize])
Opens record file for reading.
close()
Closes the record reader.
read()
Reads next record and returns the key and value for the record.
tell()
Returns the current file position in the record file.
seek(pos)
Seek to new file position pos in record file.
rewind()
Seeks back to beginning of record file.
done()
Checks for end-of-file.

To write a record file, you can use a RecordWriter:

recout = sling.RecordWriter("/tmp/test.rec")
recout.write("key1", "value1")
recout.write("key2", "value2")
recout.close()

The RecordWriter class has the following methods:

__init__(filename, [bufsize], [chunksize], [compression], [index])
Initialize record file writer.
close()
Closes the record writer.
write(key, value)
Writes record to record file.
tell()
Returns the current file position in the record file.

A set of sharded record files can be treated as a key-value database store, and you can use a RecordDatabase for looking up records by key. Record file sets consisting of multiple files need to be sharded by key fingerprint. If the index parameter is set to True when creating a record file, an internal index will be generated for the record file. This speeds up random access using the lookup method.

# Write records to indexed record file.
N=1000
writer = sling.RecordWriter("/tmp/test.rec", index=True)
for i in range(N):
  writer.write(str(i), "Data for record number " + str(i))
writer.close()

# Look up each record in record database.
db = sling.RecordDatabase("/tmp/test.rec")
for i in range(N):
  print(db.lookup(str(i)))
db.close()

The RecordDatabase class has the following methods:

__init__(filepattern, [bufsize], [cache])
Opens a set of record files specified by filepattern.
close()
Closes the record database.
lookup(key)
Look up record by key in the record file set. If the record files are indexed, the index is used for looking up the record. Otherwise, a linear scan is used for finding a matching record, which can be slow for large files.

Documents

A SLING document is a SLING frame formatted according to the document schema. A document has the raw text of the document as well as the tokens, mentions, and thematic frames:

{
  :document
  text: "John loves Mary"
  tokens: [
    {word: "John" start: 0 size: 4},
    {word: "loves" start: 5 size: 5},
    {word: "Mary" start: 11 size: 4}
  ]
  mention: {
    begin: 0
    evokes: {=#1 :/saft/person}
  }
  mention: {
    begin: 1
    evokes: {
      :/pb/love-01
      /pb/arg0: #1
      /pb/arg1: #2
    }
  }
  mention: {
    begin: 2
    evokes: {=#2 :/saft/person}
  }
}

The SLING Python API has wrapper classes for working with SLING documents, which are more convenient to use than manipulating them directly using the frame API.

The DocumentSchema class keeps track of all the frame ids for document role names. It is faster to create a document schema in the global store and pass that as an argument when creating new documents because the document role names only need to be resolved once and not each time a new document is created.

Example: read all document from a corpus:

import sling

commons = sling.Store()
docschema = sling.DocumentSchema(commons)
commons.freeze()

num_docs = 0
num_tokens = 0
corpus = sling.RecordReader("local/data/corpora/sempar/train.rec")
for _,rec in corpus:
  store = sling.Store(commons)
  doc = sling.Document(store.parse(rec), store, docschema)
  num_docs += 1
  num_tokens += len(doc.tokens)

print("docs:", num_docs, "tokens:", num_tokens)

Example: read text from a file and create a corpus of tokenized documents:

import sling

# Create global store for common definitions.
commons = sling.Store()
docschema = sling.DocumentSchema(commons)
commons.freeze()

# Open input file.
fin = open("local/news.txt", "r")

# Create record output writer.
fout = sling.RecordWriter("/tmp/news.rec")

recno = 0
for text in fin.readlines():
  # Create local store.
  store = sling.Store(commons)

  # Read text from input file and tokenize.
  doc = sling.tokenize(text, store=store, schema=docschema)

  # Add your frames and mentions here...

  # Update underlying frame for document.
  doc.update()

  # Write document to record file.
  fout.write(str(recno), doc.frame.data(binary=True))
  recno += 1

fin.close()
fout.close()

Example: write document with annotations for "John loves Mary":

import sling

# Create global store for common definitions.
commons = sling.Store()
docschema = sling.DocumentSchema(commons)

# Create global schemas.
isa = commons["isa"]
love01 = commons["/pb/love-01"]
arg0 = commons["/pb/arg0"]
arg1 = commons["/pb/arg1"]
person = commons["/saft/person"]

commons.freeze()

# Create record output writer.
fout = sling.RecordWriter("/tmp/john.rec")

# Add annotated "John loves Mary" example.
store = sling.Store(commons)
doc = sling.tokenize("John loves Mary", store=store, schema=docschema)
john = store.frame({isa: person})
mary = store.frame({isa: person})
loves = store.frame({isa: love01, arg0: john, arg1: mary})
doc.add_mention(0, 1).evoke(john)
doc.add_mention(1, 2).evoke(loves)
doc.add_mention(2, 3).evoke(mary)

# Note: One can also say doc.evoke_type(start, end, type) as a short-hand for:
# f = store.frame({isa: type})
# doc.add_mention(start, end).evoke(f)

doc.update()
fout.write("0001", doc.frame.data(binary=True))

fout.close()

The Document class has the following methods and properties:

__init__(frame=None, store=None, schema=None)
Creates a new document. If frame is None, a new "blank" document is created. Otherwise, the frame is used to initialize the document. If store is None, a new store is created for the document. If schema is None, a new DocumentSchema is created for the store, but it is faster to pass in a pre-initialized document schema when creating new documents.
text (r/w property)
Sets/gets the raw text for the document.
tokens (r/o property)
Returns a list of tokens in the document.
mentions (r/o property)
Returns a list of mentions in the document.
themes (r/o property)
Returns a list of themes in the document.
add_token(text=None, start=None, length=None, brk=SPACE_BREAK)
Adds token to the document.
add_mention(begin, end)
Adds mention to the document.
add_theme(theme)
Adds thematic frame to the document.
evoke(begin, end, frame)
Adds a mention from [begin, end) and evokes frame from it. Returns frame.
evoke_type(begin, end, type)
Adds a mention from [begin, end) and evokes a new frame of type type from it. Returns the newly built frame.
update()
Updates the underlying document frame. The update() method needs to be called after tokens, mentions, or themes have been added to the document.
phrase(begin, end)
Returns phrase text for a span of tokens.
refresh_annotations()
Re-initializes the document object from the underlying frame.

The Token class has the following properties:

index (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the index of the token.
text (r/w string property)
Gets/sets text for token.
start (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the start position in the raw text for the token.
length (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the length (in bytes) of the token in the raw text.
end (r/o int property)
Returns the end position (exclusive) of the token in the raw text.
brk (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the break level for the token, i.e. the spacing between this token and the previous token. The following token break levels are supported:
- NO_BREAK no white space between tokens
- SPACE_BREAK white space between tokens (default)
- LINE_BREAK new line between tokens
- SENTENCE_BREAK token starts a new sentence
- PARAGRAPH_BREAK token starts a new paragraph
- SECTION_BREAK token starts a new section
- CHAPTER_BREAK token starts a new chapter

The Mention class has the following methods and properties:

begin (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the index of the first token in the mention.
length (r/w int property)
Gets/sets the number of tokens in the mention.
end (r/o int property)
Returns the index of the first token after the mention.
evokes()
Returns a list of of frames evoked by this mention.
evoke(frame)
Adds frame evoked by this mention.
evoke_type(type)
Makes a frame of type type and evokes it from this mention.

The Corpus class can be used for iterating over a corpus of documents stored in record files:

for document in sling.Corpus("local/data/e/wiki/en/documents@10.rec"):
  print(document.text)

This will create a global store with the document schema symbols and create a local store for each document. If you have a global store you can use this instead, but it needs to be frozen before iterating over the documents:

kb = sling.Store()
corpus = sling.Corpus("local/data/e/wiki/en/documents@10.rec", commons=kb)
kb.freeze()
for document in corpus:
  print(document.text)

LEX format

While annotated documents can be created using the methods on the Document class, it is sometime more convenient to use LEX formatted text, which is a light-weight frame annotation format for text. This is like normal plain text, but you can add mentions with annotations to the text using special markup. Mentions in the text are enclosed in square brackets, e.g. [John] [loves] [Mary]. One or more frames evoked from a mention can be added to the mention using a vertical bar in the mention, e.g. [John|{:/saft/person}]. The frames can be assigned ids to reference the frames from other frames, e.g. [John|{=#1 :/saft/person}]. The full "John loves Mary" can be encoded in LEX format like this:

[John|{=#1 :/saft/person}] [loves|{:/pb/love-01 /pb/arg0: #1 /pb/arg1: #2}] [Mary|{=#2 :/saft/person}]

Stand-alone frames can also be added outside the mentions and then referenced in the mentions:

[John|#1] [loves|#3] [Mary|#2]
{=#1 :/saft/person}
{=#2 :/saft/person}
{=#3 :/pb/love-01 /pb/arg0: #1 /pb/arg1: #2}

If a stand-alone frame is not evoked by any mention, it is added to the document as a theme.

Mentions can also be nested:

[[New York|#1] [University|#2]|#3] {=#3 +Q49210 P276:{=#1 +Q60} P31:{=#2 +Q3918}}

A document can be created from LEX-encoded text using the lex() method:

doc = sling.lex(text)
Creates a new store and returns a document with the annotated text.
doc = sling.lex(text, store=store)
Returns a new document in the store with the annotated text.
doc = sling.lex(text, store=store, schema=docschema)
Returns a new document with the annotated text using a pre-initialized document schema.

Parsing

A document needs to be tokenized before parsing:

doc = sling.tokenize(text)
Creates a new store and returns a document with the tokenized text.
doc = sling.tokenize(text, store=store)
Returns a new document in the store with the tokenized text.
doc = sling.tokenize(text, store=store, schema=docschema)
Returns a new document with the tokenized text using a pre-initialized document schema.

The SLING frame semantic parser can be loaded from a flow file:

import sling
parser = sling.Parser("sempar.flow")

After the parser has been loaded, it can be used for parsing text and adding semantic annotations to the text:

doc = parser.parse(text)
Tokenize and parse the text and return new document with text, tokens, and frame annotations.
doc = parser.parse(frame)
Create document from frame and parse the document.
parser.parse(doc)
Parse the tokens in the document and add semantic annotations.

Phrase tables

A phrase table contains a mapping from names to frames. A phrase table for Wikidata entities is constructed by the phrase-table task, and can be used for fast retrieval of all entities having a (normalized) name matching a phrase:

import sling

# Load knowledge base and phrase table.
kb = sling.Store()
kb.load("local/data/e/wiki/kb.sling")
names = sling.PhraseTable(kb, "local/data/e/wiki/en/phrase-table.repo")
kb.freeze()

# Lookup entities with name 'Annette Stroyberg'.
for entity in names.lookup("Annette Stroyberg"):
  print(entity.id, entity.name)

# Query all entities named 'Funen' with frequency counts.
for m in names.query("Funen"):
  print(m.count(), m.id(), m.item().name, "(", m.item().description, ")")

The lookup() and query() methods return the matches in decreasing frequency order.

Dates

Dates in the knowledge base can be encoded as integers, strings, or frames:

Numbers with eight digits represent dates, e.g. 20180605 is June 05, 2018. Only dates after 1000 AD can be represented as integers. Numbers with six digits are used to represent months, e.g. 197001 means January 1970. Likewise, numbers with four digits are used for years, three digits represents decades, two digits for centuries, and one digit for millennia.
String-based date values are in ISO 8601 format, e.g. "+2013-05-01T00:00:00Z" is May 1, 2013. Dates with lower precision can be made by padding the year with *, e.g "196*" is the 1960s decade.
Knowledge base items can also be used as dates, e.g. Q6927 is the 20th century. These frames are interpreted as dates by parsing the point in time (P585) property of the item.

The Date class can be used for parsing date values from the knowledge base, e.g. getting the date of birth (P569) for Annette Stroyberg (Q2534120):

entity = kb["Q2534120"]
dob = sling.Date(entity["P569"])
print(dob.year, dob.month, dob.day)

The Date class has the following properties and methods:

year (r/w int property)
Gets/sets year. Year is 0 if date is invalid. Dates BCE is represented with negative year numbers.
month (r/w int property)
Gets/sets month (1=January). Month is 0 if there is no month in date.
day (r/w int property)
Gets/sets day of month (first day of month is 1). Day is 0 if there is no day in date.
precision (r/w int property)
Dates can have different granularities:
- MILLENNIUM if date represents a millennium.
- CENTURY if date represents a century.
- DECADE if date represents a decade.
- YEAR if date represents a year.
- MONTH if date represents a month.
- DAY if date represents a day.
iso()
Returns date in ISO 8601 format.
value()
Convert date to numeric format if the date can be encoded as an integer. This can only be done for dates after 1000 AD. Otherwise the date is returned in ISO 8601 format. This can be used for updating date properties in the knowledge base.

A Calendar object can be used for converting Date objects to text and backing off to more coarse-grained date representations. A Calendar object is initialized from a knowledge base by using the calendar definitions:

cal = sling.Calendar(kb)
dob = sling.Date(19361207)

The Calendar class has the following methods:

str(date)
Returns a human-readable representation of the date, e.g. cal.str(dob) returns "December 7, 1936". The primary language of the knowledge base is used for the conversion.
day(date)
Returns an item frame representing the day and month of the date, e.g. cal.day(dob) returns December 7 (Q2299).
month(date)
Returns an item frame representing the month of the date, e.g. cal.month(dob) returns December (Q126).
year(date)
Returns an item frame representing the year of the date, e.g. cal.year(dob) returns 1936 (Q18649).
decade(date)
Returns an item frame representing the decade of the date, e.g. cal.decade(dob) returns 1930s (Q35702).
century(date)
Returns an item frame representing the century of the date, e.g. cal.century(dob) returns 20th century (Q6927).
millennium(date)
Returns an item frame representing the millennium of the date, e.g. cal.millennium(dob) returns 2nd millennium (Q25860).

Miscellaneous

You can log messages to the SLING logging module:

import sling.log as log

log.info("Informational message")
log.warning("Warning message")
log.error("Error message")
log.fatal("Fatal error")

The SLING command line flag module is integrated with the Python flags module, so the SLING flags can be set though a standard Python argparse.ArgumentParser. Flags are defined using the flags.define() method, e.g.

import sling.flags as flags

flags.define("--verbose",
             help="output extra information",
             default=False,
             action='store_true')

The flags.define() function takes the same arguments as the standard Python add_argument() method. You can then access the flags as variables in the flags module, e.g.:

  if flags.verbose:
    print("verbose output...")

The flags parser must be initialized in the main method of your Python program:

if __name__ == '__main__':
  # Parse command-line arguments.
  flags.parse()

The WikiConverter class can convert Wikidata items in JSON format to SLING frame notation.

import sling
from urllib.request import urlopen

store = sling.Store()
wikiconv = sling.WikiConverter(store)

qid = "Q1254"
url = "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/" + qid + ".json"
json = urlopen(url).read()[len(qid) + 16:-2]

item = wikiconv.convert_wikidata(store, json)
print(item.data(pretty=True, utf8=True))

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pyapi.md

pyapi.md

SLING Python API

Table of contents

Frame stores

Record files

Documents

LEX format

Parsing

Phrase tables

Dates

Miscellaneous

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SLING Python API

Table of contents

Frame stores

Record files

Documents

LEX format

Parsing

Phrase tables

Dates

Miscellaneous