retext

What is retext?

Retext is a natural language processing (NLP) framework for analyzing and manipulating text. It provides a variety of plugins to perform tasks such as spell checking, sentiment analysis, and readability scoring.

What are retext's main functionalities?

Spell Checking

This feature allows you to check the spelling of text. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `retext-spell` plugin with an English dictionary to identify spelling errors in a given text.

const retext = require('retext');
const retextSpell = require('retext-spell');
const dictionary = require('dictionary-en');
const report = require('vfile-reporter');

retext()
  .use(retextSpell, dictionary)
  .process('speling errror', function (err, file) {
    console.error(report(err || file));
  });

Sentiment Analysis

This feature allows you to analyze the sentiment of text. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `retext-sentiment` plugin to determine the sentiment polarity and valence of a given text.

const retext = require('retext');
const retextSentiment = require('retext-sentiment');
const report = require('vfile-reporter');

retext()
  .use(retextSentiment)
  .process('I love programming!', function (err, file) {
    console.error(report(err || file));
    console.log(file.data); // { polarity: 3, valence: 1 }
  });

Readability Scoring

This feature allows you to score the readability of text. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `retext-readability` plugin to determine the readability age of a given text.

const retext = require('retext');
const retextReadability = require('retext-readability');
const report = require('vfile-reporter');

retext()
  .use(retextReadability, { age: 18 })
  .process('The cat sat on the mat.', function (err, file) {
    console.error(report(err || file));
    console.log(file.data); // { readability: { age: 6 } }
  });

Other packages similar to retext

natural

Natural is a general natural language processing (NLP) library for Node.js. It provides functionalities such as tokenization, stemming, classification, and phonetics. Compared to retext, Natural offers a broader range of NLP tools but may not be as specialized in text analysis and manipulation.

compromise

Compromise is a lightweight NLP library for Node.js that focuses on fast and easy text processing. It provides features like part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, and text normalization. While it offers some similar functionalities to retext, it is designed to be more user-friendly and performant for common NLP tasks.

README

See Browser Support for more information (a.k.a. don’t worry about those grey icons above).

---

retext is a extensible natural language system—by default using parse-latin to transform natural language into a TextOM object model. Retext provides a pluggable system for analysing and manipulating natural language. In JavaScript. NodeJS, and the browser. Tests provide 100% coverage.

Rather than being a do-all library for Natural Language Processing (e.g., NLTK or OpenNLP), retext aims to be useful for more practical use cases (such as censoring profane words or decoding emoticons, but the possibilities are endless) instead of more academic goals (research purposes). retext is inherently modular—it uses plugins (similar to rework for CSS) instead of providing everything out of the box (e.g., Natural). This makes retext a viable tool for use on the web.

Installation

NPM:

$ npm install retext

Component.js:

$ component install wooorm/retext

Usage

var Retext = require('retext'),
    emoji = require('retext-emoji'),
    smartypants = require('retext-smartypants'),
    input;

// Modified first paragraph from: 
//   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys
input = 'The three wise monkeys [. . .] sometimes called the ' +
        'three mystic apes--are a pictorial maxim. Together ' +
        'they embody the proverbial principle to ("see no evil, ' +
        'hear no evil, speak no evil"). The three monkeys are ' +
        'Mizaru (:see_no_evil:), covering his eyes, who sees no ' +
        'evil; Kikazaru (:hear_no_evil:), covering his ears, ' +
        'who hears no evil; and Iwazaru (:speak_no_evil:), ' +
        'covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.';

var text = new Retext()
  .use(emoji({
      'convert' : 'encode'
  }))
  .use(smartypants())
  .parse(input)
  .toString();
// The three wise monkeys […] sometimes called the three
// mystic apes—are a pictorial maxim. Together they
// embody the proverbial principle to (“see no evil,
// hear no evil, speak no evil”). The three monkeys are
// Mizaru (🙈), covering his eyes, who sees no evil;
// Kikazaru (🙉), covering his ears, who hears no evil;
// and Iwazaru (🙊), covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.

Plugins used: retext-emoji and retext-smartypants.

API

Retext(parser)

var Retext = require('retext'),
    ParseEnglish = require('parse-english');

var retext = new Retext(new ParseEnglish()).parse(/* ...some english... */);

Return a new Retext instance with the given parser (defaults to parse-latin).

Retext.prototype.use(plugin)

Takes a plugin—a humble function. When Retext#parse is called, the plugin will be invoked with the parsed tree, and the Retext instance as arguments. Returns self.

Retext.prototype.parse(source)

Parses the given source and returns the (by used plugins, modified) tree.

Plugins

• retext-ast — Encoding and decoding between AST (JSON) and TextOM object model;
• retext-content — Append, prepend, remove, and replace content into/from Retext nodes;
• retext-directionality — (demo) — Detect the direction text is written in;
• retext-dom — (demo) — Create a (living) DOM tree from a TextOM tree;
• retext-double-metaphone — (demo) — Implementation of the Double Metaphone algorithm;
• retext-emoji — (demo) — Encode or decode Gemojis;
• retext-keywords — Extract keywords and keyphrases;
• retext-link — (demo) — Detect links in text;
• retext-metaphone — (demo) — Implementation of the Metaphone algorithm;
• retext-porter-stemmer — (demo) — Implementation of the Porter stemming algorithm;
• retext-pos — Part-of-speech tagger;
• retext-range — Sequences of content within a TextOM tree between two points;
• retext-search — (demo) — Search in a TextOM tree;
• retext-smartypants — (demo) — Implementation of SmartyPants;
• retext-visit — (demo) — Visit nodes, optionally by type;

Desired Plugins

• retext-date — detect time and date in text;
• retext-language — Detect the language of text;
• retext-live — Detect changes in a textarea (contenteditable?), sync the diffs over to a retext tree, let plugins modify the content, and sync the diffs back to the textarea;
• retext-profanity — Censor profane words;
• retext-punctuation-pair — detect which opening or initial punctuation, belongs to which closing or final punctuation mark (and vice versa);
• retext-sentiment — Detect sentiment;
• retext-summary — Summarise text;
• retraverse — like Estraverse;

Parsers

• parse-latin (default);
• parse-english — Specifically for English;
• parse-dutch — Specifically for Dutch;

Browser Support

Pretty much every browser (available through browserstack) runs all retext unit tests.

Benchmark

Run the benchmark yourself:

$ npm run benchmark

On a MacBook Air, it parser about 2 big articles, 24 sections, or 218 paragraphs per second.

              retext.parse(source);
 218 op/s » A paragraph (5 sentences, 100 words)
  24 op/s » A section (10 paragraphs, 50 sentences, 1,000 words)
   2 op/s » An article (100 paragraphs, 500 sentences, 10,000 words)

Related

• textom

License

MIT