Example Clients

To call a TextServer service from a client program running on your side, this client needs to send the appropriate request in the right format.

The request is a standard HTTP POST request with a multiform part containing the same information you would submit via the web interface.

Below you'll find a list of example client programs in different programming languages.

The same code can be used to access any TextServer service with small variations:

• Simply change the service name in the URL to access a different service. You can find out the service name at the top of the "Execute" form of your subscribed services.
• Replace the parameters in the example client with the parametes that the called service requires. Rules are simple:
  • Language identification service does not require a "language" parameter, but the other services do.
  • All services require a "interactive" parameter stating whether the job is interactive or batch.
  • All services require either a "text_input" parameter (for interactive jobs) or a "input_file" parameter (for batch jobs).
  • You can find out the name of any other specific parameters for a service in the "Execute" form of your subscribed services.

Example Clients for Interactive Jobs

How to call the "tagger" service from python

 1 #! /usr/bin/python
 2 
 3 ########################################################################
 4 #
 5 #  Example client to submit an interactive request to TextServer 
 6 # SERVICENAME service. 
 7 #  Input may be a plain text or a text file.  No ZIP files.
 8 #  Output will be in the requested format (XML, json, conll)
 9 #
10 ########################################################################
11 
12 
13 # import required libraries
14 import urllib2
15 # You may need to install "poster" python module for these two:
16 from poster.encode import multipart_encode
17 from poster.streaminghttp import register_openers
18 
19 # Register the streaming http handlers with urllib2
20 register_openers()
21 
22 # set query elements
23 text = raw_input('Text to analyze: ')
24 lang = raw_input('Language: ')
25 out = raw_input('Output format (xml,json,conll,naf): ')
26 user = raw_input('TextServer Username: ')
27 pwd = raw_input('TextServer Password: ')
28 
29 # Encode query in a form-data.
30 # 'headers' contains the necessary Content-Type and Content-Length.
31 # 'datagen' is a generator object that yields the encoded parameters.
32 datagen, headers = multipart_encode({'username':user,
33                                      'password':pwd,
34                                      'text_input':text,
35                                      'language':lang,
36                                      'output':out,
37                                      'interactive':'1'
38                                      } )
39 # service URL
40 service = "SERVICENAME"
41 url = "http://frodo.lsi.upc.edu:8080/TextWS/textservlet/ws/processQuery/"+service
42 
43 # Create the Request object
44 request = urllib2.Request(url, datagen, headers)
45 try:
46   # Actually do the request, and get the response
47   resp =  urllib2.urlopen(request).read()
48 
49 except urllib2.HTTPError, e:
50   # handle connection errors
51   print e, "-", e.read()
52   exit()
53 
54 # No error, appropriately process response
55 # (e.g. parsing XML or JSON, and doing clever stuff with the content)
56 print resp