node-wordnet

Wordnet

This is an implementation of a Wordnet API in pure JavaScript. It was initially adapted from NaturalNode/natural, which had the original core implementation, but which was very basic and hard to use for higher-level tasks.

This is a drop-in replacement for the Wordnet access in NaturalNode/natural, but with additional methods that make it easier to use for other tasks, and probably higher in performance too. For example, the original implementation opens file handles for more or less each individual low-level query.

More recently, it includes a promise-based set of methods parallel to callback ones. Because most of the access is asynchronous, this does make it easier to use. Methods ending Async return promises. This will also assist error handling, when we get to implement that, as it was not the strongest part of the original implementation.

Usage

You'll need a copy of WordNet. There are several on Github, but for full functionality, at least for now, I'd suggest using: wndb-with-exceptions, available at: https://github.com/morungos/WNdb-with-exceptions, as it includes the morphological exception lists needed by validForms. If you don't care about that, you can get by with https://github.com/moos/WNdb, or even just download WordNet directly.

This module doesn't download and install the WordNet files, because there are several versions and it feels impolite to download and install one for you.

For easy use, therefore, it might be best to add both this module and a WordNet data module to your project, e.g.:

npm install node-wordnet --save
npm install wndb-with-exceptions --save

API

new WordNet([directory])

The constructor returns a new object to access a WordNet database at the specified directory. If no directory is passed, the module uses require to locate wndb-with-exceptions, so if you don't want to deploy your own WordNet, all you need to do is add wndb-with-exceptions as an application dependency and not pass a directory to the constructor.

The original WordNet data files can always be manually downloaded and installed anywhere from http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/download.

lookup(word, callback)

Here's an example of looking up definitions for the word, "node".

var wordnet = new WordNet()

wordnet.lookup('node', function(results) {
    results.forEach(function(result) {
        console.log('------------------------------------');
        console.log(result.synsetOffset);
        console.log(result.pos);
        console.log(result.lemma);
        console.log(result.synonyms);
        console.log(result.pos);
        console.log(result.gloss);
    });
});

lookupAsync(word)

Similar to lookup(word, callback) but returning a promise.

get(offset, pos, callback)

Given a synset offset and a part of speech, a definition can be looked up directly.

var wordnet = new WordNet()

wordnet.get(4424418, 'n', function(result) {
    console.log('------------------------------------');
    console.log(result.lemma);
    console.log(result.pos);
    console.log(result.gloss);
    console.log(result.synonyms);
});

getAsync(offset, pos)

Similar to get(offset, pos, callback) but returning a promise.

validForms(word, callback)

Returns valid morphological exceptions.

var wordnet = new WordNet()
wordnet.validForms('axes#n', console.log);

validFormsAsync(word)

Similar to validForms(word, callback) but returning a promise.

querySense(query, callback)

Queries WordNet to find all the senses of a given word, optionally with a part-of-speech.

var wordnet = new WordNet()
wordnet.querySense('axes#n', console.log);

querySenseAsync(query)

Similar to querySense(query, callback) but returning a promise.

Future work

Error handling needs to be tightened a fair bit, and there is plenty of room to make the API a bit easier to use as well.