Skip to main content

How I did customize "rasa-nlu-trainer" as my own tool


Check out my implementation here

Background

I wanted to have a tool for human beings to classify intents and extract entities of texts which were obtained from a raw dataset such as Rocket.chat's conversation, Maluuba Frames or here. Then, the output (labeled texts) could be consumed by an NLU tool such as Rasa NLU.

rasa-nlu-trainer was a potential one which I didn't need to build an app from scratch. However, I needed to add more of my own features to fulfill my needs. They were:

1. Loading/displaying raw texts stored by a database such as MongoDB
2. Manually labeling intents and entities for the loaded texts
3. Persisting labeled texts into the database

I firstly did look up what rasa-nlu-trainer's technologies were used in order to see how to implement my mentioned features.

At first glance

rasa-nlu-trainer was bootstrapped with Create React App. Create React App is a tool to create a React app with no build configuration, as it said. This tool is also recommended by the official React.js tutorial. I actually was very new to React.js. I wondered what problem Creat React App tried to solve so that I first wanted to set up a project without Create React App. I followed this post.

Well, let me say if I built a React app from scratch then I needed to do some manual configurations for Webpack and Babel including webpack.config.json and .babelrc

Then, I tried to use Create React App, and I followed this guide. All right, let me say Create React App helped me create a React boilerplate project with hiding Webpack and Babel's configuration so that as a developer I only needed to focus on writing production code.

The nuts and bolts

I went on starting to watch how rasa-nlu-trainer's source code was organized and what its techniques are used.

Folder structure

1. Auto-created stuff by Create React App
   - public/index.html
   - src/index.js
2. Overrides
   - They didn't use "react-script", they created their own way instead! That was the reason why some additional folder/files were added such as server.js, scripts and config.

Used technologies

- Programming language: Javascript
- Babel: ES6 transpiler
- Project bundle: Webpack
- Dependencies management: npm
- Backend: Node.js
- Fronted framework/project-based: React.js
- React model storing: React-Redux
- React UI extension components: Ant Design
- TypeScript

Hooray! Welcome me to Javascript world!

Architecture

- index.js: Provider{store} <---> LocaleProvider ---> App
- How "separation of concerns" works: import and  export
- Global data (store) is immutable and only changed by files actions.js and reducer.js

Proposed changes

Finally, I could start to add my needs to the existing rasa-nlu-trainer app. I listed out what my features:
- Creating an overview page as a custom React component to display all loaded texts
- Customizing the existing page for classifying intents and extracting entities.
- Implementing Node.js methods to load/stores texts (as JSON)  which stored in MongoDB

The rule of thumb was I needed to follow the mentioned architecture for modifying the global data which were managed by React-Redux.

You can take a look at the changes from this pull request.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the best way to learn new techs is to get down into an existing tool and customize it with your own needs. 💪

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

[Snippet] CSS - Child element overlap parent

I searched from somewhere and found that a lot of people says a basic concept for implementing this feature looks like below: HTML code: <div id="parent">  <div id="child">  </div> </div> And, CSS: #parent{   position: relative;   overflow:hidden; } #child{   position: absolute;   top: -1;   right: -1px; } However, I had a lot of grand-parents in my case and the above code didn't work. Therefore, I needed an alternative. I presumed that my app uses Boostrap and AngularJs, maybe some CSS from them affects mine. I didn't know exactly the problem, but I believed when all CSS is loaded into my browser, I could completely handle it. www.tom-collinson.com I tried to create an example to investigated this problem by Fiddle . Accidentally, I just changed: position: parent; to position: static; for one of parents -> the problem is solved. Look at my code: <div class="modal-body dn-placeholder-parent-positi...

Coders are NERDS | Learning English with Podcast

Let's learn three English vocabulary words based on real-life context through a humorous video about the life of software coders, especially at big tech companies when they work from home. Credit to Joma Tech. 🤓

The HelloWorld example of JSF 2.2 with Myfaces

I just did by myself create a very simple app "HelloWorld" of JSF 2.2 with a concrete implementation Myfaces that we can use it later on for our further JSF trying out. I attached the source code link at the end part. Just follow these steps below: 1. Create a Maven project in Eclipse (Kepler) with a simple Java web application archetype "maven-archetype-webapp". Maven should be the best choice for managing the dependencies , so far. JSF is a web framework that is the reason why I chose the mentioned archetype for my example. 2. Import dependencies for JSF implementation - Myfaces (v2.2.10) into file pom.xml . The following code that is easy to find from  http://mvnrepository.com/  with key words "myfaces". <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId> <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId> <version>2.2.10</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core<...

Styling Sort Icons Using Font Awesome for Primefaces' Data Table

So far, Primefaces has used image sprites for displaying the sort icons. This leads to a problem if we want to make a different style for these icons; for example, I would make the icon "arrow up" more blurry at the first time the table loading because I want to highlight the icon "arrow down". I found a way that I can replace these icons with Font Awesome icons. We will use "CSS Pseudo-classes" to achieve it. The hardest thing here is that we should handle displaying icons in different cases. There is a case both "arrow up" and "arrow down" showing and other case is only one of these icons is shown. .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s { background-image: none; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 1.1666em; position: relative; } .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s:not(.ui-icon-triangle-1-s)::before { content: "\f106"; font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: ...

A Template for Software Engineering Standards

Software engineering standard template A well-structured standard acts as a blueprint that guides engineers in their daily tasks and long-term goals. Below, I will outline a template for creating a comprehensive software engineering standard. Header The header serves as the document's identifier. It contains the following: Authors : The people who have contributed to the creation of the standard. Created Date : The date when the document was initially created. Version : The version of the standard. It is typically updated with significant changes. Status : The current status of the document, whether it's in draft, in-review, or official. Next Review Date : The date when the standard will be reviewed for relevancy and accuracy. Table of Contents A table of contents provides an overview of what the document contains, making it easier for readers to navigate through the document. Body The body of the standard comprises: Values : The core beliefs that guide the decision-maki...