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Ecolect

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Ecolect is a library for JavaScript and TypeScript that helps with matching natural language phrases and values. This can be used as a part in building a natural language interface for things such as bots, voice or search interfaces.

Installation

$ npm install --save ecolect

Features

  • Natural language parsing of different values, such as:
    • Dates and times (via dateValue, timeValue and dateTimeValue)
    • Date intervals (via dateIntervalValue)
    • Durations (via dateDurationValue, timeDurationValue and dateTimeDurationValue)
    • Numbers (via ordinalValue, numberValue and integerValue)
  • Matching of phrases, including value extraction
  • Partial matching of phrases, for auto-complete uses such as action launches

Examples

Using a value:

import { en } from '@ecolect/language-en';
import { dateValue } from 'ecolect';

const matcher = dateValue().toMatcher(en);
const bestMatch = await matcher.match('first Monday of 2021');

Matching phrases:

import { en } from '@ecolect/language-en';
import { newPhrases, dateIntervalValue } from 'ecolect';

const matcher = newPhrases()
  .value('when', dateIntervalValue())
  .phrase('Show todos due {when}')
  .phrase('Todos due {when}')
  .toMatcher(en);

const bestMatch = await matcher.match('todo due today');

Combining phrases:

import { en } from '@ecolect/language-en';
import { intentsBuilder, newPhrases, dateIntervalValue } from 'ecolect';

const matcher = intentsBuilder(en)
  .add('orders', newPhrases()
    .phrase('Orders')
    .phrase('Show orders')
    .build()
  )
  .add('orders:active', newPhrases()
    .phrase('Orders that are active')
    .phrase('Show orders that are active')
    .build()
  )
  .build();

const bestMatch = await matcher.match('orders');

// Or partially match
const matches = await matcher.matchPartial('orders);

Options

Option Default Description
now new Date() Date to use as a base for times and dates parsed
weekStartsOn 0 (Sunday) The day the week starts on
firstWeekContainsDate 1 The day of January which is always in the first week of the year.

A note about weeks

It's important to set weekStartsOn and firstWeekContainsDate to something expected by the user. The default value for weekStartsOn is 0 which indicates that weeks start on Sunday.

firstWeekContainsDate defaults to 1 which is commonly used in North America and Islamic date systems. Countries that use this week numbering include Canada, United States, India, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, the Phillippines and most of Latin America.

For EU countries most of them use Mondays as the start of the week and the ISO week system. Settings weekStartsOn to 1 and firstWeekContainsDate to 4 will set weeks to a style used in EU and most other European countries, most of Acia and Oceania.

Middle Eastern countries commonly use Saturday as their first day of week and a week numbering system where the first week of the year contains January 1st. Set weekStartsOn to 6 and firstWeekContainsDate to 1 to use this style of week.

For more information about week numbering see the Week article on Wikipedia.

Value types

Integer

import { integerValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = integerValue();

Capture any positive integer number.

Language Examples
English 20, zero, one million, 4 000, 1 dozen, 100k

Returned value

The returned value is a BigInteger from numeric-types.

Number

import { numberValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = numberValue();

Capture any number, including numbers with a fractional element.

Language Examples
English 20, 2.4 million, 8.0, -12

Returned value

The returned value is a BigDecimal from numeric-types.

Ordinal

import { ordinalValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = ordinalValue();

Capture an ordinal, such as 1st, indicating a position.

Language Examples
English 1st, third, 3, the fifth

Returned value

The returned value is a BigInteger from numeric-types.

Date

import { dateValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = dateValue();

Capture a date representing a single day.

Language Examples
English today, in 2 days, january 12th, 2010-02-22, 02/22/2010, first friday in 2020

Returned value

The returned value is a LocalDate from datetime-types.

Time

import { timeValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = timeValue();

Capture a time of day.

Language Examples
English 09:00, 3 pm, at 3:30 am, noon, quarter to twelve, in 2 hours, in 45 minutes

Returned value

The returned value is a LocalTime from datetime-types.

Date & Time

import { dateTimeValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = dateTimeValue();

Capture both a date and a time.

Language Examples
English 3pm on Jan 12th, in 2 days and 2 hours, 14:00

Returned value

The returned value is a LocalDateTime from datetime-types.

Date Interval

import { dateIntervalValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = dateIntervalValue();

Capture an interval between two dates.

Language Examples
English today, this month, February to March, 2018-01-01 to 2018-04-05, January 15th - 18th

Returned value

The returned value is a DateInterval from datetime-types.

Date Duration

import { dateDurationValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = dateDurationValue();

Capture a duration.

Language Examples
English 2 days, 2m, 1d, 1 year and 2 days, 4y 2m, 1 week

Returned value

Time Duration

import { timeDurationValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = timeDurationValue();

Capture a duration of hours, minutes, seconds and miliseconds.

Language Examples
English 2 hours, 1s, 2h, 45m, 4 minutes and 10 seconds

Returned value

Date & Time Duration

import { dateTimeDurationValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = dateTimedurationValue();

Capture a duration of both days, hours, minutes, seconds and miliseconds.

Language Examples
English 2 hours, 2 d 20 m, 4 weeks and 10 minutes

Returned value

Enumeration

import { enumerationValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = enumerationValue([
  'Option 1',
  'Other option'
]);

Capture one of the specified values. Used to specify one or more values that should match.

Text

import { anyTextValue } from 'ecolect';

const value = anyTextValue();

Text can be captured with the type anyTextValue. You can use anyTextValue for things such as search queries, todo items and calendar events. Values of type anyTextValue will always try to capture as much as they can and will not validate the result.