simple_NER

Lightweight named-entity recognition library with pluggable annotators, multi-language support, and an async pipeline.

Installation

pip install simple_NER
pip install "simple_NER[dev]"   # + testing tools

Quick Start

from simple_NER import create_pipeline

pipe = create_pipeline(["email", "phone", "url", "temporal", "currency"])
for entity in pipe.process("Call +1-800-555-0100 or email info@example.com by 2025-06-01"):
    print(entity.entity_type, entity.value, entity.confidence)
# phone    +1-800-555-0100   0.9
# email    info@example.com  1.0
# date     2025-06-01        0.85

Annotators

Factory key(s)	Class	Detects	Language
email, email_regex	EmailAnnotator / EmailNER	Email addresses	Any
names	NamesNER	Person names (noun heuristic, confidence 0.65–0.8)	English / Latin
locations, countries, cities	LocationNER	Countries, capitals, cities	All (wordlist)
temporal, datetime, duration	TemporalNER	Dates, times, durations	lang param
numbers, written_numbers	NumberNER	Numeric and written numbers	lang param
lookup, wordlist	LookUpNER	Custom wordlists	lang param
url, urls	URLAnnotator	HTTP/HTTPS URLs	Any
phone, phone_number	PhoneAnnotator	Phone numbers	Any
currency, money	CurrencyAnnotator	Amounts + currency symbol/code	Any
organization, org, company	OrganizationAnnotator	Org/company names	lang param
hashtag, hashtags, tag	HashtagAnnotator	#hashtags	Any
date, dates	DateAnnotator	Structured date strings	lang param

Key annotator parameters

LocationNER: include_countries=True, include_capitals=True, include_cities=False, label_confidence={"City": 0.7, "Country": 0.95}

PhoneAnnotator: require_country_code=False, min_length=7

OrganizationAnnotator: strict_mode=False (when True, requires corporate suffix like Inc./GmbH)

TemporalNER / NumberNER / DateAnnotator / LookUpNER: lang="en-us", optionally anchor_date for TemporalNER

Entity Data Fields

Each Entity carries a data dict with annotator-specific fields:

Annotator	Extra fields in data
EmailAnnotator	local_part, domain, start, end
URLAnnotator	protocol, start, end
PhoneAnnotator	digits, digit_count, type (international/us_national/local/other), has_country_code, start, end
CurrencyAnnotator	amount (float), currency (ISO code), currency_symbol, start, end
LocationNER	country_code, label, start, end
HashtagAnnotator	tag_type (shouting/lowercase/CamelCase/underscored/alphanumeric/mixed), start, end
OrganizationAnnotator	org_type (company/educational/medical/other), start, end
NumberNER	number (str, digit form), start, end
DateAnnotator	year, month, day, format, start, end

Pipeline Dedup Strategies

NERPipeline and AsyncNERPipeline accept a dedup_strategy argument:

Strategy	Behaviour
keep_all	Return every entity span, including overlaps
keep_longest	When spans overlap, keep the longer one
keep_higher_confidence	When spans overlap, keep the higher-confidence one
keep_first	When spans overlap, keep the first one encountered

pipe = create_pipeline(["currency", "numbers"], dedup_strategy="keep_longest")

Locale / i18n System

Annotators load language-specific patterns from simple_NER/locale/<lang>/:

Extension	Content	Loader
.rx	One raw regex per line	load_rx(name, lang)
.intent	NL templates {var} → named capture	load_intents(name, lang)
.txt	Plain wordlist, one entry per line	load_wordlist(name, lang)

All loaders fall back to en-us when no language-specific file exists. intent_to_regex("{amount} dollars") converts an intent template to a compiled re.Pattern.

Adding a new language: create simple_NER/locale/<lang>/ and place .rx, .intent, or .txt files that override the en-us defaults. Only the files you add are used; everything else falls back automatically. Inside a BaseAnnotator subclass, self._load_rx("name") and self._load_intents("name") resolve to self.lang automatically.

Existing locale data: en-us (phone, email, url, hashtag, currency, organization, date_months), de-de (currency, organization, date_months), es/fr/it/nl/pt (date_months).

Async Batch Processing

import asyncio
from simple_NER.annotators.async_pipeline import AsyncNERPipeline

pipe = AsyncNERPipeline(dedup_strategy="keep_longest")
pipe.add_annotator(...)

async def run():
    results = await pipe.process_batch_async(sentences, max_concurrency=10)

asyncio.run(run())

OVOS Plugin

simple_NER ships an intent-transformer plugin for the OpenVoiceOS / OVOS ecosystem. Entry-point group: opm.transformer.intent, key: simple-ner-transformer, priority 50, class: SimpleNERIntentTransformer.

{
  "intent_transformers": {
    "simple-ner-transformer": {
      "annotators": ["email", "phone", "temporal", "currency"],
      "confidence_threshold": 0.6,
      "lang": "en-us"
    }
  }
}

The transformer runs the configured pipeline on every utterance and injects recognized entities into match_data before intent handling proceeds.

Links

• docs/index.md — full API reference and architecture
• docs/TUTORIALS.md — step-by-step tutorials
• docs/API.md — detailed class and method docs
• examples/README.md — runnable example index
• GitHub