Regulations Parser

This library/tool parses federal regulations (either plain text or XML) and much of their associated content. It can write the results to JSON files, an API, or even a git repository. The parser works hand-in-hand with regulations-core, and API for hosting the parsed regulations and regulation-site, a front-end for the data structures generated.

This repository is part of a larger project. To read about it, please see http://cfpb.github.io/eRegulations/.

Quick Start

Here's an example, using CFPB's regulation H.

1. git clone https://github.com/cfpb/regulations-parser.git
2. cd regulations-parser
3. pip install -r requirements.txt
4. wget http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2012-title12-vol8/xml/CFR-2012-title12-vol8-part1004.xml
5. python build_from.py CFR-2012-title12-vol8-part1004.xml 12 2011-18676 15 1693

At the end, you will have new directories for regulation, layer, diff, and notice which would mirror the JSON files sent to the API.

Features

• Split regulation into paragraph-level chunks
• Create a tree which defines the hierarchical relationship between these chunks
• Layer for external citations -- links to Acts, Public Law, etc.
• Layer for graphics -- converting image references into federal register urls
• Layer for internal citations -- links between parts of this regulation
• Layer for interpretations -- connecting regulation text to the interpretations associated with it
• Layer for key terms -- pseudo headers for certain paragraphs
• Layer for meta info -- custom data (some pulled from federal notices)
• Layer for paragraph markers -- specifying where the initial paragraph marker begins and ends for each paragraph
• Layer for section-by-section analysis -- associated analyses (from FR notices) with the text they are analyzing
• Layer for table of contents -- a listing of headers
• Layer for terms -- defined terms, including their scope
• Layer for additional formatting, including tables, "notes", code blocks, and subscripts
• Build whole versions of the regulation from the changes found in final rules
• Create diffs between these versions of the regulations

Requirements

• lxml (3.2.0) - Used to parse out information XML from the federal register
• pyparsing (1.5.7) - Used to do generic parsing on the plain text
• inflection (0.1.2) - Helps determine pluralization (for terms layer)
• requests (1.2.3) - Client library for writing output to an API
• requests_cache (0.4.4) - Optional - Library for caching request results (speeds up rebuilding regulations)
• GitPython (0.3.2.RC1) - Allows the regulation to be written as a git repo
• python-constraint (1.2) - Used to determine paragraph depth

If running tests:

• nose (1.2.1) - A pluggable test runner
• mock (1.0.1) - Makes constructing mock objects/functions easy
• coverage (3.6) - Reports on test coverage
• cov-core (1.7) - Needed by coverage
• nose-cov (1.6) - Connects nose to coverage

API Docs

Read The Docs

Installation

Getting the Code and Development Libs

Download the source code from GitHub (e.g. git clone [URL])

Make sure the libxml libraries are present. On Ubuntu/Debian, install it via

$ sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt-dev

Create a virtual environment (optional)

$ sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
$ mkvirtualenv parser

Get the required libraries

$ cd regulations-parser
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Pull down the regulation text

The parser can generally read either plain-text or XML versions of a regulation, though the XML version gives much better hints. If you have a regulation as plain text, make sure to remove any table-of-contents and superflous lines (e.g. "Link to an amendment" and "Back to Top", which might appear if copy-pasting from e-CFR.

A better strategy would be to parse using an XML file. This XML can come from annual editions of the regulations, or Federal Register notices, if the notice contains a reissuance of the whole regulation (e.g. CFPB re-issued regulation E).

Run the parser

The syntax is

$ python build_from.py regulation.ext title notice_doc_# act_title act_section

For example, to match the reissuance above:

$ python build_from.py 725.xml 12 2013-1725 15 1693

Here 12 is the CFR title number (in our case, for "Banks and Banking"), 2013-1725 is the last notice used to create this version (i.e. the last "final rule" which is currently in effect), 15 is the title of "the Act" and 1693 is the relevant section. Wherever the phrase "the Act" is used in the regulation, the external link parser will treat it as "15 U.S.C. 1693". The final rule number is used to pull in section-by-section analyses and deduce which notices were used to create this version of the regulation. It also helps determine which notices to use when building additional versions of the regulation. To find the document number, use the Federal Register, finding the last, effective final rule for your version of the regulation and copying the document number from the meta data (currently in a table on the right side).

Running the command will generate four folders, regulation, notice, layer and possibly diff in the OUTPUT_DIR (current directory by default).

If you'd like to write the data to an api instead (most likely, one running regulations-core), you can set the API_BASE setting (described below).

Settings

All of the settings listed in settings.py can be overridden in a local_settings.py file. Current settings include:

• OUTPUT_DIR - a string with the path where the output files should be written. Only useful if the JSON files are to be written to disk.
• API_BASE - a string defining the url root of an API (if the output files are to be written to an API instead)
• GIT_OUTPUT_DIR - a string path which will be used to initialize a git repository when writing history
• META - a dictionary of extra info which will be included in the "meta" layer. This is free-form, but could be used for copyright information, attributions, etc.
• CFR_TITLES - array of CFR Title names (used in the meta layer); not required as those provided are current
• DEFAULT_IMAGE_URL - string format used in the graphics layer; not required as the default should be adequate
• IGNORE_DEFINITIONS_IN - a dictionary mapping CFR part numbers to a list of terms that should not contain definitions. For example, if 'state' is a defined term, it may be useful to exclude the phrase 'shall state'. Terms associated with the constant, ALL, will be ignored in all CFR parts parsed.
• OVERRIDES_SOURCES - a list of python modules (represented via string) which should be consulted when determining image urls. Useful if the Federal Register versions aren't pretty. Defaults to a regcontent module.
• MACRO_SOURCES - a list of python modules (represented via strings) which should be consulted if replacing chunks of XML in notices. This is more or less deprecated by LOCAL_XML_PATHS. Defaults to a regcontent module.
• REGPATCHES_SOURCES - a list of python modules (represented via strings) which should be consulted when determining changes to regulations made in final rules. Defaults to a regcontent module
• LOCAL_XML_PATHS - a list of paths to search for notices from the Federal Register. This directory should match the folder structure of the Federal Register. If a notice is present in one of the local paths, that file will be used instead of retrieving the file, allowing for local edits, etc. to help the parser.

Building the documentation

For most tweaks, you will simply need to run the Sphinx documentation builder again.

$ pip install Sphinx
$ cd docs
$ make dirhtml

The output will be in docs/_build/dirhtml.

If you are adding new modules, you may need to re-run the skeleton build script first:

$ pip install Sphinx
$ sphinx-apidoc -F -o docs regparser/

Running Tests

As the parser is a complex beast, it has several hundred unit tests to help catch regressions. To run those tests, make sure you have first added all of the testing requirements:

$ pip install -r requirements_test.txt

Then, run nose on all of the available unit tests:

$ nosetests tests/*.py

If you'd like a report of test coverage, use the nose-cov plugin:

$ nosetests --with-cov --cov-report term-missing --cov regparser tests/*.py

Note also that this library is continuously tested via Travis. Pull requests should rarely be merged unless Travis gives the green light.

Additional Details

Here, we dive a bit deeper into some of the topics around the parser, so that you may use it in a production setting.

Parsing Workflow

The parser first reads the file passed to it as a parameter and attempts to parse that into a structured tree of subparts, sections, paragraphs, etc. Following this, it will make a call to the Federal Register's API, retrieving a list of final rules (i.e. changes) that apply this is regulation. It then writes/saves parsed versions of those notices.

If this all worked well, we save the the parsed regulation and then generate an save all of the layers associated with it's version. We then generate additional, whole regulation trees and their associated layers for each final rule (i.e. each alteration to the regulation).

At the very end, we take all versions of the regulation we've build and compare each pair (both going forwards and backwards). These diffs are generated and then written to the API/filesystem/Git.

Output

The parser has three options for what it does with the parsed documents it creates. With no configuration, all of the objects it creates will be pretty-printed as json files and stored in subfolders of the current directory. Where the output is written can be configured via the OUTPUT_DIR setting. Spitting out JSON files this way is a good way to track how tweaks to the parser might have unexpected affects on the output -- just diff two such directories.

If the API_BASE setting is configured, the output will be written to an API (running regulations-core) rather than the file system. The same JSON files are sent to the API as in the above method. This would be the method used once you are comfortable with the results (by testing the filesystem output).

A final method, a bit divergent from the other two, is to write the results as a git repository. Using the GIT_OUTPUT_DIR setting, you can tell the parser to write the versions of the regulation (only; layers, notices, etc. are not written) as a git history. Each node in the parse tree will be written as a markdown file, with hierarchical information encoded in directories. This is an experimental feature, but has a great deal of potential.

Modifying Data

Our sources of data, through human and technical error, often contain problems for our parser. Over the parser's development, we've created several not-always-exclusive solutions. We have found that, in most cases, the easiest fix is to download and edit a local version of the problematic XML. Only if there's some complication in that method should you progress to the more complex strategies.

All of the paths listed in LOCAL_XML_PATHS are checked when fetching regulation notices. The file/directory names in these folders should mirror those found on federalregister.gov, (e.g. articles/xml/201/131/725.xml). Any changes you make to these documents (such as correcting XML tags, rewording amendment paragraphs, etc.) will be used as if they came from the Federal Register.

In addition, certain notices have multiple effective dates, meaning that different parts of the notice go into effect at different times. This complication is not handled automatically by the parser. Instead, you must manually copy the notice into two (or more) versions, such that 503.xml becomes 503-1.xml, 503-2.xml, etc. Each file must then be manually modified to change the effective date and remove sections that are not relevant to this date. We sometimes refer to this as "splitting" the notice.

While editing the notice is generally an effective strategy, there are certain corner cases in which the parser simply does not support the logic needed to determine what's going on. In these situations, you have the option of using custom "patches" for notices, via the REGPATCHES_SOURCES setting. The setting refers to a Python object that has keys and values (e.g. a dict). The keys are notice document numbers (e.g. 2013-22752 or 2013-22752_20140110 for a split notice). When the changes associated with a particular notice are consulted (to build the next regulation version), the entries in the value are added to the list of notice changes. This strategy is useful for certain appendix alterations.

Appendix Parsing

The most complicated segments of a regulation are their appendices, at least from a structural parsing perspective. This is because appendices are free-form, often with unique variations on sub-sections, headings, paragraph marker hierarchy, etc. Given all this, the parser does it's best job to determine an ordering and a hierarchy for the subsections/paragraphs contained within an appendix.

In general, if the parser can find a unique identifier or paragraph marker, it will note the paragraph/section accordingly. So "Part I: Blah Blah" becomes 1111-A-I, and "a. Some text" and "(a) Some text)" might become 1111-A-I-a. When the citable value of a paragraph cannot be determined (i.e. it has no paragraph marker), the paragraph will be assigned a number and prefaced with "p" (e.g. p1, p2). Similarly, headers become h1, h2, ...

This works out, but had numerous downsides. Most notably, as the citation for such paragraphs is arbitrary, determining changes to appendices is quite difficult (often requiring patches). Further, without guidance from paragraph markers/headers, the parser must make assumptions about the hierarchy of paragraphs. It currently uses some heuristics, such as headers indicating a new depth level, but is not always accurate.

Markdown/Plaintext-ifying

With some exceptions, we treat a plain-text version of the regulation as cannon. By this, we mean that the words of the regulation could for much more than their presentation in the source documents. This allows us to build better tables of content, export data in more formats, and the other niceties associated with separating data from presentation.

At points, however, we need to encode non-plain text concepts into the plain-text regulation. These include displaying images, tables, offsetting blocks of text, and subscripting. To encode these concepts, we use a variation of Markdown.

Images become

![Appendix A9](ER27DE11.000)

Tables become

| Header 1 | Header 2|
---
| Cell 1, 1 | Cell 1, 2 |

Subscripts become

P_{0}

etc.

Runtime

A quick note of warning: the parser was not optimized for speed. It performs many actions over and over, which can be very slow on very large regulations (such as CFPB's regulation Z). Further, regulations that have been amended a great deal cause further slow down, particularly when generating diffs (currently an n**2 operation). Generally, parsing will take less than ten minutes, but in the extreme example of reg Z, it currently requires several hours.

Parsing Error Example

Let's say you are already in a good steady state, that you can parse the known versions of a regulation without problem. A new final rule is published in the federal regiseter affecting your regulation. To make this concrete, we will use CFPB's regulation Z (12 CFR 1026), final rule 2014-18838.

The first step is to run the parser as we have before. We should configure it to send output to a local directory (see above). Once it runs, it will hit the federal register's API and should find the new notice. As described above, the parser first parses the file you give it, then it heads over to the federal register API, parses notices and rules found there, and then proceeds to compile additional versions of the regulation from them. So, as the parser is running (Z takes a long time), we can check its partial output. Notably, we can check the notice/2014-18838 json file for accuracy.

In a browser, open https://www.federalregister.gov and search for the notice in question (you can do this by using the 2014-18838 identifier). Scroll through the page to find the list of changes -- they will generally begin with "PART ..." and be offset from the rest of the text. In a text editor, look at the json file mentioned before.

The json file, which describes our parsed notice has two relevant fields. The amendments field lists what types of changes are being made; it corresponds to AMDPAR tags (for reference). Looking at the web page, you should be able to map sentences like "Paragraph (b)(1)(ii)(A) and (B) are revised" to an appropriate PUT/POST/DELETE/etc. entry in the amendments field. If these do not match up, you know that there's an error parsing the AMDPARs. You will need to alter the XML for this notice to read how the parser can understand it. If the logic behind the change is too complicated, e.g. "remove the third semicolon and replace the fourth sentence", you will need to add a "patch" (see above).

In this case, the amendment parsing was correct, so we can continue to the second relevant field. The changes field includes the content of changes made (when adding or editing a paragraph). If all went well you should be able to relate all of the PUT/POST entries in the amendments section with an entry in the changes field, and the content of that entry should match the content from the federal register. Note that a single amendment may include multiple changes if the amendment is about a paragraph with children (sub-paragraphs).

Here we hit a problem, and have a few tip-offs. One of the entries in amendmends was not present in the changes field. Further, one of the changes entries was something like "i. * * *". In addition, the "child_labels" of one of the entries doesn't make sense -- it contains children which should not be contained. The parser must have skipped over some relevant information; we could try to deduce further but let's treat the parser as a black box and see if we can't spot a problem in the web-hosted rule, first. You see, federalregister.gov uses XSLTs to take the raw XML (which we parse) to convert it into XHTML. If we have a problem, they might as well.

We'll zero in on where we know our problem begins (based on the information investigating changes). We might notice that the text of the problem section is in italics, while those arround it (other sections which do parse correctly) are not. We might not. In any event, we need to look at the XML. On the federal register's site, there is a 'DEV' icon in the right sidebar and an 'XML' link in the modal. We're going to download this XML and put it where our parser knows to look (see the LOCAL_XML_PATHS setting). For example, if this setting is

LOCAL_XML_PATHS = ['fr-notices/']

we would need to save the XML file to fr-notices/articles/xml/201/418/838.xml, duplicating the directory structure found on the federal register. I recommend using a git repository and committing this "clean" version of the notice.

Now, edit the saved XML and jump to our problematic section. Does the XML structure here match sections we know work? It does not. Our "italic" tip off above was accurate. The problematic paragraphs are wrapped in E tags, which should not be present. Delete them and re-run the parser. You will see that this fixes our notice.

Generally, this will be the workflow. Something doesn't parse correctly and you must investigate. Most often, the problems will reside in unexpected XML structure. AMDPARs, which contain the list of changes may also need to be simplified. If the same type of change needs to be made for multiple documents, consider adding a corresponding rule to the parser -- just test existing docs first.