Python HeidelTime

py_heideltime is a python wrapper for the multilingual temporal tagger HeidelTime originally developed by Jorge Mendes and Ricardo Campos. This repo is a gross simplification of the original work that reduces the interface and the outputs of the heideltime function. Please do checkout the original repo which provides a much more comprehensive overview of the library.

Installation

pip install py_heildetime

Install External Resources

In order to use py_heideltime you must have java JDK and perl installed in your machine for heideltime dependencies.

Windows users

To install java JDK begin by downloading it here. Once it is installed don't forget to add the path to the environment variables. On user variables for Administrator add the JAVA_HOME as the Variable name:, and the path (e.g., C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-12.0.2\bin) as the Variable value. Then on System variables edit the Path variable and add (e.g., ;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-12.0.2\bin) at the end of the variable value.

For Perl, we recommend to download and install the following distribution. Once it is installed don't forget to restart your PC. Note that perl doesn't need to be installed if you are using Anaconda instead of pure Python distribution.

Linux users

Perl usually comes with Linux, thus you don't need to install it.

To install JAVA:

sudo apt install default-jdk

How to use

from py_heideltime import heideltime

text = "Thurs August 31st - News today that they are beginning to evacuate the London children tomorrow. Percy is a billeting officer. I can't see that they will be much safer here."

timexs = heideltime(
    text,
    language='English',
    document_type='news',
    dct='1939-08-31'
)

print(timexs)

Output

[
  {
    "text": "August 31st",
    "tid": "t2",
    "type": "DATE",
    "value": "1939-08-31",
    "span": [6, 17]
  },
  {
    "text": "today",
    "tid": "t3",
    "type": "DATE",
    "value": "1939-08-31",
    "span": [25, 30]
  },
  {
    "text": "tomorrow",
    "tid": "t4",
    "type": "DATE",
    "value": "1939-09-01",
    "span": [87, 95]
  }
]

We highly recommend you to use this python notebook if you are interested in playing with py_heideltime when using the standalone version.

Supported languages

This GitHub package is prepared to work with the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, French.

To use py_heideltime with other languages proceed as follows:

• Download from TreeTagger the parameter files
• gunzip <downloaded_file>
• Copy the extracted file to the module folder /py_heideltime/HeidelTime/TreeTagger<your_system>/lib/

Publications

Please cite the appropriate paper when using py_heideltime. In general, this would be:

Strötgen, Gertz: Multilingual and Cross-domain Temporal Tagging. Language Resources and Evaluation, 2013. pdf bibtex

Other related papers may be found here.