training-data-importers.rst

desc:	Change the way Rasa imports training data by replacing the default importer or writing your own importer.

Training Data Importers

.. edit-link::

• RasaFileImporter (default)
• MultiProjectImporter (experimental)
• Writing a Custom Importer
• TrainingDataImporter

By default, you can use command line arguments to specify where Rasa should look for training data on your disk. Rasa then loads any potential training files and uses them to train your assistant.

If needed, you can also customize how Rasa imports training data. Potential use cases for this might be:

• using a custom parser to load training data in other formats
• using different approaches to collect training data (e.g. loading them from different resources)

You can instruct Rasa to load and use your custom importer by adding the section importers to the Rasa configuration file and specifying the importer with its full class path:

importers:
- name: "module.CustomImporter"
  parameter1: "value"
  parameter2: "value2"
- name: "module.AnotherCustomImporter"

The name key is used to determine which importer should be loaded. Any extra parameters are passed as constructor arguments to the loaded importer.

Note

You can specify multiple importers. Rasa will automatically merge their results.

RasaFileImporter (default)

By default Rasa uses the importer RasaFileImporter. If you want to use it on its own, you don't have to specify anything in your configuration file. If you want to use it together with other importers, add it to your configuration file:

importers:
- name: "RasaFileImporter"

MultiProjectImporter (experimental)

Warning

This feature is currently experimental and might change or be removed in the future. Please share your feedback on it in the forum to help us making this feature ready for production.

With this importer you can build a contextual AI assistant by combining multiple reusable Rasa projects. You might, for example, handle chitchat with one project and greet your users with another. These projects can be developed in isolation, and then combined at train time to create your assistant.

An example directory structure could look like this:

.
├── config.yml
└── projects
    ├── GreetBot
    │   ├── data
    │   │   ├── nlu.md
    │   │   └── stories.md
    │   └── domain.yml
    └── ChitchatBot
        ├── config.yml
        ├── data
        │   ├── nlu.md
        │   └── stories.md
        └── domain.yml

In this example the contextual AI assistant imports the ChitchatBot project which in turn imports the GreetBot project. Project imports are defined in the configuration files of each project. To instruct Rasa to use the MultiProjectImporter module, put this section in the config file of your root project:

importers:
- name: MultiProjectImporter

Then specify which projects you want to import. In our example, the config.yml in the root project would look like this:

imports:
- projects/ChitchatBot

The configuration file of the ChitchatBot in turn references the GreetBot:

imports:
- ../GreetBot

The GreetBot project does not specify further projects so the config.yml can be omitted.

Rasa uses relative paths from the referencing configuration file to import projects. These can be anywhere on your file system as long as the file access is permitted.

During the training process Rasa will import all required training files, combine them, and train a unified AI assistant. The merging of the training data happens during runtime, so no additional files with training data are created or visible.

Note

Rasa will use the policy and NLU pipeline configuration of the root project directory during training. Policy or NLU configurations of imported projects will be ignored.

Note

Equal intents, entities, slots, templates, actions and forms will be merged, e.g. if two projects have training data for an intent greet, their training data will be combined.

Writing a Custom Importer

If you are writing a custom importer, this importer has to implement the interface of :ref:`training-data-importers-trainingFileImporter`:

from typing import Optional, Text, Dict, List, Union

import rasa
from rasa.core.domain import Domain
from rasa.core.interpreter import RegexInterpreter, NaturalLanguageInterpreter
from rasa.core.training.structures import StoryGraph
from rasa.importers.importer import TrainingDataImporter
from rasa.nlu.training_data import TrainingData


class MyImporter(TrainingDataImporter):
    """Example implementation of a custom importer component."""

    def __init__(
        self,
        config_file: Optional[Text] = None,
        domain_path: Optional[Text] = None,
        training_data_paths: Optional[Union[List[Text], Text]] = None,
        **kwargs: Dict
    ):
        """Constructor of your custom file importer.

        Args:
            config_file: Path to configuration file from command line arguments.
            domain_path: Path to domain file from command line arguments.
            training_data_paths: Path to training files from command line arguments.
            **kwargs: Extra parameters passed through configuration in configuration file.
        """

        pass

    async def get_domain(self) -> Domain:
        path_to_domain_file = self._custom_get_domain_file()
        return Domain.load(path_to_domain_file)

    def _custom_get_domain_file(self) -> Text:
        pass

    async def get_stories(
        self,
        interpreter: "NaturalLanguageInterpreter" = RegexInterpreter(),
        template_variables: Optional[Dict] = None,
        use_e2e: bool = False,
        exclusion_percentage: Optional[int] = None,
    ) -> StoryGraph:
        from rasa.core.training.dsl import StoryFileReader

        path_to_stories = self._custom_get_story_file()
        return await StoryFileReader.read_from_file(path_to_stories, await self.get_domain())

    def _custom_get_story_file(self) -> Text:
        pass

    async def get_config(self) -> Dict:
        path_to_config = self._custom_get_config_file()
        return rasa.utils.io.read_config_file(path_to_config)

    def _custom_get_config_file(self) -> Text:
        pass

    async def get_nlu_data(self, language: Optional[Text] = "en") -> TrainingData:
        from rasa.nlu.training_data import loading

        path_to_nlu_file = self._custom_get_nlu_file()
        return loading.load_data(path_to_nlu_file)

    def _custom_get_nlu_file(self) -> Text:
        pass

TrainingDataImporter

.. autoclass:: rasa.importers.importer.TrainingDataImporter

   .. automethod:: get_domain

   .. automethod:: get_config

   .. automethod:: get_nlu_data

   .. automethod:: get_stories