Extract entities with ML Kit on iOS

To analyze a piece of text and extract the entities in it, invoke the ML Kit entity extraction API by passing the text directly to its annotateText:completion: method. It is also possible to pass in an optional EntityExtractionParams object which contains other configuration options such as a reference time, timezone, or a filter to limit the search for a subset of entity types. The API returns a list of EntityAnnotation objects containing information about each entity.

The entity extraction base detector assets are statically linked at app run time. They add about 10.7MB to your app.

Try it out

  • Play around with the sample app to see an example usage of this API.

Before you begin

  1. Include the following ML Kit libraries in your Podfile:

    pod 'GoogleMLKit/EntityExtraction', '7.0.0'

  2. After you install or update your project's Pods, open your Xcode project using its .xcworkspace. ML Kit is supported in Xcode version 13.2.1 or higher.

Extract entities from text

To extract entities from text, first create an EntityExtractorOptions object by specifying the language and use that to instantiate an EntityExtractor:

Swift

// Note: You can specify any of the 15 languages entity extraction supports here. 
let options = EntityExtractorOptions(modelIdentifier: 
                                    EntityExtractionModelIdentifier.english)
let entityExtractor = EntityExtractor.entityExtractor(options: options)

Objective-C

// Note: You can specify any of the 15 languages entity extraction supports here. 
MLKEntityExtractorOptions *options = 
    [[MLKEntityExtractorOptions alloc] 
        initWithModelIdentifier:MLKEntityExtractionModelIdentifierEnglish];

MLKEntityExtractor *entityExtractor = 
    [MLKEntityExtractor entityExtractorWithOptions:options];

Next, ensure that the required language model is downloaded to the device:

Swift

entityExtractor.downloadModelIfNeeded(completion: {
  // If the error is nil, the download completed successfully.
})

Objective-C

[entityExtractor downloadModelIfNeededWithCompletion:^(NSError *_Nullable error) {
    // If the error is nil, the download completed successfully.
}];

Once the model has been downloaded, pass a string and an optional MLKEntityExtractionParams to the annotate method.

Swift

// The EntityExtractionParams parameter is optional. Only instantiate and
// configure one if you need to customize one or more of its params.
var params = EntityExtractionParams()
// The params object contains the following properties which can be customized on
// each annotateText: call. Please see the class's documentation for a more
// detailed description of what each property represents.
params.referenceTime = Date();
params.referenceTimeZone = TimeZone(identifier: "GMT");
params.preferredLocale = Locale(identifier: "en-US");
params.typesFilter = Set([EntityType.address, EntityType.dateTime])

extractor.annotateText(
    text.string,
    params: params,
    completion: {
      result, error in
      // If the error is nil, the annotation completed successfully and any results 
      // will be contained in the `result` array.
    }
)

Objective-C

// The MLKEntityExtractionParams property is optional. Only instantiate and
// configure one if you need to customize one or more of its params.
MLKEntityExtractionParams *params = [[MLKEntityExtractionParams alloc] init];
// The params object contains the following properties which can be customized on
// each annotateText: call. Please see the class's documentation for a fuller 
// description of what each property represents.
params.referenceTime = [NSDate date];
params.referenceTimeZone = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithAbbreviation:@"GMT"];
params.preferredLocale = [NSLocale localWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en-US"];
params.typesFilter = 
    [NSSet setWithObjects:MLKEntityExtractionEntityTypeAddress, 
                          MLKEntityExtractionEntityTypeDateTime, nil];

[extractor annotateText:text.string
             withParams:params
             completion:^(NSArray *_Nullable result, NSError *_Nullable error) {
  // If the error is nil, the annotation completed successfully and any results 
  // will be contained in the `result` array.
}

Loop over the annotation results to retrieve information about the recognized entities.

Swift

// let annotations be the Array! returned from EntityExtractor
for annotation in annotations {
  let entities = annotation.entities
  for entity in entities {
    switch entity.entityType {
      case EntityType.dateTime:
        guard let dateTimeEntity = entity.dateTimeEntity else {
          print("This field should be populated.")
          return
        }
        print("Granularity: %d", dateTimeEntity.dateTimeGranularity)
        print("DateTime: %@", dateTimeEntity.dateTime)
      case EntityType.flightNumber:
        guard let flightNumberEntity = entity.flightNumberEntity else {
          print("This field should be populated.")
          return
        }
        print("Airline Code: %@", flightNumberEntity.airlineCode)
        print("Flight number: %@", flightNumberEntity.flightNumber)
      case EntityType.money:
        guard let moneyEntity = entity.moneyEntity else {
          print("This field should be populated.")
          return
        }
        print("Currency: %@", moneyEntity.integerPart)
        print("Integer Part: %d", moneyEntity.integerPart)
        print("Fractional Part: %d", moneyEntity.fractionalPart)
      // Add additional cases as needed.
      default:
        print("Entity: %@", entity);
    }
  }
}

Objective-C

NSArray *annotations; // Returned from EntityExtractor

for (MLKEntityAnnotation *annotation in annotations) {
            NSArray *entities = annotation.entities;
            NSLog(@"Range: [%d, %d)", (int)annotation.range.location, (int)(annotation.range.location + annotation.range.length));
            for (MLKEntity *entity in entities) {
              if ([entity.entityType isEqualToString:MLKEntityExtractionEntityTypeDateTime]) {
                MLKDateTimeEntity *dateTimeEntity = entity.dateTimeEntity;
                NSLog(@"Granularity: %d", (int)dateTimeEntity.dateTimeGranularity);
                NSLog(@"DateTime: %@", dateTimeEntity.dateTime);
                break;
              } else if ([entity.entityType isEqualToString:MLKEntityExtractionEntityTypeFlightNumber]) {
                MLKFlightNumberEntity *flightNumberEntity = entity.flightNumberEntity;
                NSLog(@"Airline Code: %@", flightNumberEntity.airlineCode);
                NSLog(@"Flight number: %@", flightNumberEntity.flightNumber);
                break;
              } else if ([entity.entityType isEqualToString:MLKEntityExtractionEntityTypeMoney]) {
                MLKMoneyEntity *moneyEntity = entity.moneyEntity;
                NSLog(@"Currency: %@", moneyEntity.unnormalizedCurrency);
                NSLog(@"Integer Part: %d", (int)moneyEntity.integerPart);
                NSLog(@"Fractional Part: %d", (int)moneyEntity.fractionalPart);
                break;
              } else {
                // Add additional cases as needed.
                NSLog(@"Entity: %@", entity);
              }
            }