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CLIFF: Extract Named Entities and Geoparse the News

CLIFF is a lightweight server to allow HTTP requests to the Stanford Named Entity Recognizer and a modified CLAVIN 2.1.0 geoparser.
It allows you to submit unstructured text over HTTP and a receive in reply JSON results with information about organizations mentioned, locations mentioned, people mentioned, and countries the text is "about". The geoparsing is tuned to identify cities, states and countries.

Installing

You can try CLIFF out on our public website: http://cliff.mediacloud.org. We don't host a public installation of CLIFF for you to use. If you want to install and use CLIFF quickly, try our Docker config.

If you want to access CLIFF's results from Python, use our `mediacloud-cliff Python client API library:

pip install mediacloud-cliff

Using

To test it out, hit this url in a browser and you should get some JSON back:

http://localhost:8080/cliff-2.6.1/parse/text?q=This is some text about New York City, and maybe about Accra as well, and maybe Boston as well.

Of course, when you use this in a script you should do an HTTP POST, not a GET!

Public API Endpoints

/parse/text

The reason CLIFF exists! This parses some text and returns the entities mentioned (people, places and organizations).

Parameter Default Notes
q (required) Raw text of a news story that you want to parse
replaceAllDemonyms false "true" if you want to count things like "Chinese" as a mention of the country China

Example Query: http://localhost:8080/CLIFF-2.1.1/parse/text?q=Some%20clever%20text%20mentioning%20places%20like%20New%20Delhi,%20and%20people%20like%20Einstein.%20Perhaps%20also%20we%20want%20mention%20an%20organization%20like%20the%20United%20Nations?

Response:

{
  "results": {
    "organizations": [
      {
        "count": 1,
        "name": "United Nations"
      }
    ],
    "places": {
      "focus": {
        "cities": [
          {
            "id": 1261481,
            "lon": 77.22445,
            "name": "New Delhi",
            "score": 1,
            "countryGeoNameId": "1269750",
            "countryCode": "IN",
            "featureCode": "PPLC",
            "featureClass": "P",
            "stateCode": "07",
            "lat": 28.63576,
            "stateGeoNameId": "1273293",
            "population": 317797
          }
        ],
        "states": [
          {
            "id": 1273293,
            "lon": 77.1,
            "name": "National Capital Territory of Delhi",
            "score": 1,
            "countryGeoNameId": "1269750",
            "countryCode": "IN",
            "featureCode": "ADM1",
            "featureClass": "A",
            "stateCode": "07",
            "lat": 28.6667,
            "stateGeoNameId": "1273293",
            "population": 16787941
          }
        ],
        "countries": [
          {
            "id": 1269750,
            "lon": 79,
            "name": "Republic of India",
            "score": 1,
            "countryGeoNameId": "1269750",
            "countryCode": "IN",
            "featureCode": "PCLI",
            "featureClass": "A",
            "stateCode": "00",
            "lat": 22,
            "stateGeoNameId": "",
            "population": 1173108018
          }
        ]
      },
      "mentions": [
        {
          "id": 1261481,
          "lon": 77.22445,
          "source": {
            "charIndex": 40,
            "string": "New Delhi"
          },
          "name": "New Delhi",
          "countryGeoNameId": "1269750",
          "countryCode": "IN",
          "featureCode": "PPLC",
          "featureClass": "P",
          "stateCode": "07",
          "confidence": 1,
          "lat": 28.63576,
          "stateGeoNameId": "1273293",
          "population": 317797
        }
      ]
    },
    "people": [
      {
        "count": 1,
        "name": "Einstein"
      }
    ]
  },
  "status": "ok",
  "milliseconds": 4004,
  "version": "2.6.1"
}

/geonames

A convenience method to help you lookup places by their geonames ids.

Parameter Default Notes
id (required) The unique id that identifies a place in the geonames.org database

Example Query: http://localhost:8080/cliff-2.6.1/geonames?id=4930956

Response:

{
  "results": {
    "id": 4930956,
    "lon": -71.05977,
    "name": "Boston",
    "countryGeoNameId": "6252001",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "featureCode": "PPLA",
    "featureClass": "P",
    "parent": {
      "id": 4952349,
      "lon": -71.06575,
      "name": "Suffolk County",
      "countryGeoNameId": "6252001",
      "countryCode": "US",
      "featureCode": "ADM2",
      "featureClass": "A",
      "parent": {
        "id": 6254926,
        "lon": -71.10832,
        "name": "Massachusetts",
        "countryGeoNameId": "6252001",
        "countryCode": "US",
        "featureCode": "ADM1",
        "featureClass": "A",
        "parent": {
          "id": 6252001,
          "lon": -98.5,
          "name": "United States",
          "countryGeoNameId": "6252001",
          "countryCode": "US",
          "featureCode": "PCLI",
          "featureClass": "A",
          "stateCode": "00",
          "lat": 39.76,
          "stateGeoNameId": "",
          "population": 310232863
        },
        "stateCode": "MA",
        "lat": 42.36565,
        "stateGeoNameId": "6254926",
        "population": 6433422
      },
      "stateCode": "MA",
      "lat": 42.3555,
      "stateGeoNameId": "6254926",
      "population": 722023
    },
    "stateCode": "MA",
    "lat": 42.35843,
    "stateGeoNameId": "6254926",
    "population": 617594
  },
  "status": "ok",
  "version": "2.6.1"
}

/extract

A convenience method to help you get the raw text of the story from a URL. This uses the boilerpipe library.

Parameter Default Notes
url (required) The url of a news story to extract the text of

Example Query: http://localhost:8080/cliff-2.6.1/extract?url=http://www.theonion.com/articles/woman-thinks-she-can-just-waltz-back-into-work-aft,38349/

Response:

{
  "results": {
    "text": "Business\nPresented by\nWoman Thinks She Can Just Waltz Back Into Work After Maternity Leave Without Bringing Baby To Office\nClose\nVol 51 Issue 13  \u00b7  Local \u00b7 Workplace \u00b7 Parents \u00b7 Kids \u00b7 After Birth\nKENWOOD, OH\u2014Saying she has a lot of nerve to try and pull something like this, employees of insurance agency Boland & Sons told reporters Wednesday that coworker Emily Nelson seems to believe she can just waltz back into work after her maternity leave without once bringing her baby into the office. \u201cI don\u2019t know where she gets off thinking she doesn\u2019t need to come in here with that baby strapped around her in a bjorn,\u201d said Greg Sheldrick, adding that Nelson is out of her goddamn mind if she seriously believes showing off a few measly pictures of the newborn on her cell phone is an adequate substitute for bringing him around to meet everyone in their department. \u201cShe\u2019s been back for three weeks already, so the grace period is over. She needs to come in with that baby in a stroller, roll it by my desk, and say \u2018Somebody wants to say hello,\u2019 or, frankly, she might as well never show her face here again. Seriously, every single person here better get a chance to lean in and smile at that baby, and God help her if she shows up the rest of this week empty-handed.\u201d Sheldrick reportedly expressed equal astonishment that Nelson\u2019s husband thinks he can get away with not once arriving with the infant to pick up his wife from work.\nShare This Story:\nSign-up For The Onion's Newsletter\nGive your spam filter something to do.\nDaily Headlines\nThe Onion is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.\n\u00a9 Copyright 2015 Onion Inc. All rights reserved\n",
    "title": "Woman Thinks She Can Just Waltz Back Into Work After Maternity Leave Without Bringing Baby To Office - The Onion - America's Finest News Source",
    "url": "http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/articles\/woman-thinks-she-can-just-waltz-back-into-work-aft,38349\/"
  },
  "status": "ok",
  "milliseconds": 625,
  "version": "2.6.1"
}

Options

You can configure how CLIFF runs by editing environment variables.

  • INDEX_PATH - controls where CLIFF will look for the geonames index (defaults to /etc/cliff2/IndexDirectory for reverse compatability)

Developing

You need maven and java (1.8). We develop in Eclipse Kepler: Java EE.

Eclipse & Java on Mac

You might need to update your version of the JRE for developing on Mac. If so, you can do:

brew update
brew cask install Java

Install CLAVIN

You need to download and install the latest version of CLAVIN in order to build the Geonames Gazetteer Index for geoparsing. The idea is that you build all that, and then create a symlink at /etc/cliff2/IndexDirectory to the CLAVIN index you just built.

Instead of building the CLAVIN geonames index yourself, consider downloading a prebuilt one from mediacloud-clavin-build-geonames-index repository's releases page.

To build, run mvn in the top level directory. You can do mvn package -DskipTests and then you will get a .war file in webapp/target/.

Tomcat Setup

CLIFF is setup to be run inside a Java servlet container (ie. Tomcat 8). For development we use the Maven Tomcat plugin. To deploy, add this to your %TOMCAT_PATH%/conf/tomcat-users.xml file:

  <role rolename="manager"/>
  <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
  <role rolename="manager-script"/>
  <user username="cliff" password="beer" roles="manager,manager-gui,manager-script"/>

Also add this to your ~/.m2/settings.xml:

  <servers>
    <server>
	  <id>CliffTomcatServer</id>
      <username>cliff</username>
      <password>beer</password>
    </server>
  </servers>

That lets the Maven Tomcat plugin upload the WAR it builds over the website control panel.

Building and Deploying to Tomcat

First make sure tomcat is running (ie. catalina run). Now run mvn tomcat7:deploy -DskipTests to deploy the app, or mvn tomcat7:redeploy -DskipTests to redeploy once you've already got the app deployed.

Pluggable Entity Extraction

CLIFF leverages a pluggable entity extractor(s) via a java SPI system. This works by discovering which providers implement the EntityExtractor interface on the classpath. To work, the jar containing the entity extractor must exist in the classpath of the CLIFF Webapp. By default, this project utilizes a maven profile which will select the stanford-ner model by default. However, the Stanford NER leverages a GNU / Commercial License.

Running the MITIE NER

Download and compile the MITIE NER package for your system following the instructions at MITIE. As MITIE is not published to a maven repo, prior to compiling CLIFF you must install MITIE via mvn such as mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-install-plugin:2.5.2:install-file -Dfile=$PWD/javamitie.jar -DgroupId=edu.mit.ll.mitie -DartifactId=mitie -Dversion=0.4 -Dpackaging=jar Once compiled, the MITIE binary library must also be on your tomcat / java's java.libray.path. You can either set this on your system to the folder of the MITIE binary or copy the MITIE binary to $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/. MITIE requires a model which is a fairly large download. Follow the instructions on the MITIE site to retrieve this and point cliff.properties at the location you choose to store this in your deployment.

The final step is during your build, you must disable the stanford-ner maven profile and activate the mitie profile. For example mvn -P mitie,\!stanford-ner clean install, mvn -P mitie,\!stanford-ner tomcat7:run. Cliff will then use MITIE instead of Stanford NER.

Using your own NER

To use your own NER, create a mvn module modeled after the MITIE example. You must modify the webapp/pom.xml for a correct profile which includes the MITIE NER sub-module and includes the transitive depenencies of your NER system. Then make sure you install any modules you need for your NER system and can activate the module as described in the MITIE section.

Testing

We have a number of unit tests that can be run with mvn test.

Releasing

To build a release:

  1. first update the version numbers in all the pom.xml files (pom.xml, webapp/pom.xml, common/pom.xml, stanford-entity-extractor/pom.xml )
  2. also update the version number in org.mediacloud.cliff.ParseManager
  3. to create the WAR file, run mvn package
  4. update the examples in README.md
  5. tag the release with the version number vX.Y.Z
  6. author a new release for that tag on GitHub, write a description of the changes, and upload the .war

Deploying on Ubuntu

We run our servers on Ubuntu - here's some tips for deploying to that type of server:

  1. First make sure you have java7: sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk
  2. First install tomcat7: sudo apt-get install tomcat7.
  3. Point tomcat at the correct java: open /etc/default/tomcat7 then uncomment and change the JAVA_HOME var to /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64
  4. Increase tomcat's memory: open /etc/default/tomcat7 and change the JAVA_OPTS var to inclue something like -Xmx4024m
  5. Put your war in the right place: on Ubuntu this is /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/