rikace / sharpsimplenlg

C# version of SimpleNLG

SharpSimpleNLG

SharpSimpleNLG is a C# port of the University of Aberdeen simplenlg project. All thanks and acknowledgement for hard work goes to this team.

NuGet

SharpSimpleNLG

Install-Package SharpSimpleNLG

Version News

Version 1.1.1:

• Thanks to PR from Andriy Svyrd now supports .NET Standard 1.3. Added to NuGet package (I hope my packaging is OK!)
• Renaming .csproj to ensure naming of assemblies is OK
• Move all extension methods (on Enums, mainly) into the SimpleNLG.Extensions namespace to stop pollution (thanks for recommendation Andriy)
• Fix pathing to Lexicon
• NuGet packaging fixes

Version 1.0.2:

• Permit passing of path to default-lexicon.xml into the XMLLexicon constructor
• thereby permitting a rough-draft (and untested) .NET Core port

Version 1.0.0 First commit/NuGet:

• Taken the current release of SimpleNLG (V4.4.8 API) version and generated a C# version.
• Unit tests ported, with added tests for C# specifics (Java idioms in Regex, Collections, equals, strings.substring etc)
• Current release English, with no HTML generation nor NIHLexicon import

How to Use SharpSimpleNLG?

I have to write some good documentation.

Look at the code in the Syntax Tutorials Unit Test. All these pass, so it is a good starter.

The simplenlg Tutorial is a good resource.

Or look at the general Unit Tests and see what simplenlg can do: SharpSimpleNLG Unit Tests

Building SharpSimpleNLG

• Visual Studio 2015 with C# 6.0 recommended (as this is what I used)
• I've only used C# null conditionals and string interpolation in a couple of places so C# 6.0 isn't a forced requirement
• Assembly created is .NET 4.5.2, but there is only use of generic HashSet<T>, Stack<T>, List<T> and Dictionary<K,V> with no async/await - so it should port to earlier .NET if you are into that sort of thing.

Unit Tests

• 270 Unit tests using NUnit included.

• Passing Unit tests from the original project have been ported
• Added Unit tests for this particular port
• 7 tests do not pass; I think this is related to the configuration of the Unit tests rather than a code issue.

Learnings

I am sure someone somewhere at sometime (most likely me) will find my Learnings on Java to C# interesting and useful.

Outstanding and Future Work

• contribute back to parent!
• implement NIHLexicon and MultipleLexicon
• implement HTMLFormatter
• re-work Unit test hierarchy
• continue to track simplenlg changes and additions
• fluent-style sentence and phrase creation
• More C#/functional style
• Enums.ToString() change to Enum "side" hierarchy (because of C#/Java differences)
• smarter types (eg: widely used Dictionary<string, object> to subclassed to make life easier)
• Documentation specific to this port

Questions? You can find me on Twitter @RealNickHodge or email Nick Hodge