Ecolect helps with parsing natural language to intents and values. This can be used as a part in building a natural language interface for things such as bots, voice or search interfaces.
$ npm install --save ecolect
The main function of Ecolect is to match natural language expressions to
intents. Every expression is parsed into tokens that are matched and scored
using a language specific comparison function. This allows the library to
match for example cookies
even if the user skipped the last s
and entered
cookie
instead.
Matching can also be run in two modes:
- Normal mode - Match a full expression to an intent, which is best used when building a bot or a voice interface.
- Partial mode - Match most of the expression, for example when building an action launcher or a auto-complete for a search engine
import { intentsBuilder } from 'ecolect';
import { en } from 'ecolect/language/en';
import { anyStringValue } from 'ecolect/values';
const intents = intentsBuilder(en)
.intent('lights:on')
.value('room', anyStringValue())
.add('turn lights on')
.add('turn lights in {room} on')
.done()
.intent('lights:off')
.value('room', anyStringValue())
.add('turn lights off')
.add('turn lights in {room} off')
.done()
.build();
// Normal mode - match the best
intents.match('turn lights off')
.then(results => {
if(results.best) {
// One of the expressions matched
console.log('Intent:', results.best.intent);
console.log('Values:', results.best.values)
// results.matches will contain the top matches if anything else matched as well
}
});
intents.match('turn lights', { partial: true })
.then(results => {
results.matches.forEach(match => console.log(match));
});
Option | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
partial |
false |
If partial matching should be performed |
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. |
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.
Intents in Ecolect can also contain values, there are several built in types and it's easy to provide custom value validation. Values are used to capture information, such as dates, numbers, names and freeform text.
Values can either be used within intents or standalone as matchers:
const en = require('ecolect/language/en');
const { date } = require('ecolect/values');
// Create a matcher for the date value
const dateMatcher = date().matcher(en);
// Call the matcher
dateMatcher('2018')
.then(value => /* do something with the value */)
.catch(err => /* handle errors */);
// Optionally specify options for parsing, such as what day the week starts on
dateMatcher('start of week 12', { weekStartsOn: 1 /* Monday*/ })
.then(value => /* do something with the value */)
.catch(err => /* handle errors */);
Capture any positive integer number.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 20 , zero , one million , 4 000 , 1 dozen , 100k |
The returned value is a simple object with one key named value
.
{ value: 2 }
const { integer } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('list')
.value('count', integer())
.add('Show top {count} items')
.done();
Capture any number, including numbers with a fractional element.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 20 , 2.4 million , 8.0 , -12 |
The returned value is a simple object with one key named value
.
{ value: 2.4 }
const { number } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('add')
.value('amount', number())
.add('Add {amount} to result')
.done();
Capture an ordinal, such as 1st
, indicating a position.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 1st , third , 3 , the fifth |
The returned value is a simple object with one key named value
.
{ value: 5 }
const { ordinal } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('pick')
.value('position', ordinal())
.add('Show {position} in the list')
.done();
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 |
The returned value is an object with the keys year
, month
, day
and can
be turned into a Date
via the function toDate
.
const date = value.toDate();
const { date } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('deadline')
.value('date', date())
.add('Set deadline to {date}')
.done();
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 |
The returned value is an object with the keys hour
, minute
, second
and can
be turned into a Date
via the function toDate
.
const date = value.toDate();
const { time } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('alarm')
.value('time', time())
.add('Wake me {time}')
.done();
Capture both a date and a time.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 3pm on Jan 12th , in 2 days and 2 hours , 14:00 |
const { dateTime } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('schedule')
.value('when', dateTime())
.add('Schedule a call {when}')
.done();
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 |
The returned value is an object with two dates in the start
and end
keys.
Objects can be turned into dates with toStartDate()
and toEndDate()
:
const start = value.toStartDate();
const end = value.toEndDate();
const { dateInterval } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('add')
.value('interval', dateInterval())
.add('Todos with deadline within {dateInterval}')
.done();
Capture a duration.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 2 days , 2m, 1d , 1 year and 2 days , 4y 2m , 1 week |
The returned value is an object containg fields with the change, such as
years
, weeks
, months
and days
. The function toDate(currentTime)
can
be used to add the duration to a date.
// Add the duration to the current time
const fromNow = value.toDate();
// Add the duration to the specific date and time
const fromSpecific = value.toDate(new Date(2015, 0, 2));
const { dateDuration } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('listPending')
.value('dateDuration', dateDuration())
.add('Show todos due to be completed in {dateDuration}')
.done();
Capture a duration of hours, minutes, seconds and miliseconds.
Language | Examples |
---|---|
English | 2 hours , 1s , 2h, 45m , 4 minutes and 10 seconds |
The returned value is an object containg fields with the change, such as
hours
, minutes
, seconds
and milliseconds
. The function
toDate(currentTime)
can be used to add the duration to a date.
// Add the duration to the current time
const fromNow = value.toDate();
// Add the duration to the specific date and time
const fromSpecific = value.toDate(new Date(2015, 0, 2, 10, 0));
const { timeDuration } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('timer')
.value('timeDuration', timeDuration())
.add('Set a timer for {timeDuration}')
.done();
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 |
The returned value is an object containg fields with the change, such as
years
, weeks
, months
and days
, hours
, minutes
, seconds
and
milliseconds
. The function toDate(currentTime)
can be used to add the
duration to a date.
// Add the duration to the current time
const fromNow = value.toDate();
// Add the duration to the specific date and time
const fromSpecific = value.toDate(new Date(2015, 0, 2, 10, 0));
const { dateTimeDuration } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('timer')
.value('dateTimeDuration', dateTimeDuration())
.add('Set a timer for {dateTimeDuration}')
.done();
Capture one of the specified values. Used to specify one or more values that should match.
const { enumeration } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('list')
.value('type', enumeration([
'Balloons',
'Cookies',
'Tasty Cake'
]))
.add('Show me the last {type}')
.done();
Text can be captured with the type any
. You can use any
for things such as
search queries, todo items and calendar events. Values of type any
will
always try to capture as much as they can and will not validate the result.
const { any } = require('ecolect/values');
builder.intent('echo')
.value('text', any())
.add('Echo {text}')
.done();