ssml-split

SSML Split

Splits SSML strings into batches AWS Polly ánd Google's Text to Speech API can consume.

Based on polly-ssml-split by @oleglegun

Changes compared to polly-ssml-split:

Added includeSSMLTagsInCounter: boolean option to count characters based on the complete SSML tag and not just the included text characters.

For example: <speak><p>some text</p></speak>

The default behaviour would count that as 9 characters, which is fine for AWS Polly, but not for Google's Text to Speech API.

With includeSSMLTagsInCounter: true it will be count as 31 characters, just like Google's Text to Speech API counts it.

Usage:

npm install ssml-split --save

const ssmlSplit = require('ssml-split')

const options = {
  softLimit: 2500, // Finds a possible split moment starting from 2500 characters
  hardLimit: 5000, // Google Text to Speech limitation
  includeSSMLTagsInCounter: true // Set true when using Google Text to Speech API, set to false with AWS Polly
}

ssmlSplit.configure(options)

const batches = ssmlSplit.split('<speak>your long text here</speak>')

API Documentation

Options

AWS

const options = {
  softLimit: 1500,
  hardLimit: 3000, // AWS Polly limitation
  includeSSMLTagsInCounter: false
}

Google

const options = {
  softLimit: 2500,
  hardLimit: 5000, // Google Text to Speech API limitation
  includeSSMLTagsInCounter: true
}

You can tweak the softLimit to see what works for you. I suggest you keep the hardLimit at the limitation limit of the respective API.

About

The polly-ssml-split by @oleglegun library already handles splitting of SSML correctly for AWS Polly, but wasn't working properly for Google's Text to Speech. So I just modified the package to fit my needs.

By adding the option includeSSMLTagsInCounter to include the SSML tag characters in the calculation on when to split the SSML, makes the library also work with Google's Text to Speech API.

This package should prevent you from seeing this error when using Google's Text to Speech API:

INVALID_ARGUMENT: 5000 characters limit exceeded.

Source

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing?hl=en

Note that Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags are included in the character count for billing purposes. For example, this input counts as 79 characters, including the SSML tags, newlines, and spaces:

<speak>
 <say-as interpret-as="cardinal">12345</say-as> and one more
</speak>

Changelog

0.1.12

2 January 2020

• Added changelog.md d8838be
• Release 0.1.12 41c5988
• Remove comma 3a90e2a