Analyzing Entities

Entity Analysis inspects the given text for known entities (proper nouns such as public figures, landmarks, etc.), and returns information about those entities. Entity analysis is performed with the analyzeEntities method. For information about the types of entities Natural Language identifies, see the Entity documentation. For information on which languages are supported by the Natural Language API, see Language Support.

This section demonstrates a few ways to detect entities in a document. For each document, you must submit a separate request.

Analyzing Entities in a String

Here is an example of performing entity analysis on a text string sent directly to the Natural Language API:

Protocol

To analyze entities in a document, make a POST request to the documents:analyzeEntities REST method and provide the appropriate request body as shown in the following example.

The example uses the gcloud auth application-default print-access-token command to obtain an access token for a service account set up for the project using the Google Cloud Platform gcloud CLI. For instructions on installing the gcloud CLI, setting up a project with a service account see the Quickstart.

curl -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer "$(gcloud auth application-default print-access-token) \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
     --data "{
  'encodingType': 'UTF8',
  'document': {
    'type': 'PLAIN_TEXT',
    'content': 'President Trump will speak from the White House, located
  at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC, on October 7.'
  }
}" "https://language.googleapis.com/v2/documents:analyzeEntities"

If you don't specify document.language_code, then the language will be automatically detected. For information on which languages are supported by the Natural Language API, see Language Support. See the Document reference documentation for more information on configuring the request body.

If the request is successful, the server returns a 200 OK HTTP status code and the response in JSON format:

{
  "entities": [
    {
      "name": "October 7",
      "type": "DATE",
      "metadata": {
        "month": "10",
        "day": "7"
      },
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "October 7",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN",
          "probability": 1
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "1600",
      "type": "NUMBER",
      "metadata": {
        "value": "1600"
      },
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "1600",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN",
          "probability": 1
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "7",
      "type": "NUMBER",
      "metadata": {
        "value": "7"
      },
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "7",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN",
          "probability": 1
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
      "type": "ADDRESS",
      "metadata": {
        "locality": "Washington",
        "narrow_region": "District of Columbia",
        "street_name": "Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest",
        "street_number": "1600",
        "broad_region": "District of Columbia",
        "country": "US"
      },
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN",
          "probability": 1
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {},
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "PROPER",
          "probability": 0.901
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "President",
      "type": "PERSON",
      "metadata": {},
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "President",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "COMMON",
          "probability": 0.941
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Trump",
      "type": "PERSON",
      "metadata": {},
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "Trump",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "PROPER",
          "probability": 0.948
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Washington, DC",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {},
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "Washington, DC",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "PROPER",
          "probability": 0.92
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "White House",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {},
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "White House",
            "beginOffset": -1
          },
          "type": "PROPER",
          "probability": 0.785
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "languageCode": "en",
  "languageSupported": true
}

The entities array contains Entity objects representing the detected entities, which include information such as the entity name and type.

gcloud

Refer to the analyze-entities command for complete details.

To perform entity analysis, use the gcloud CLI and use the --content flag to identify the content to analyze:

gcloud ml language analyze-entities --content="President Trump will speak from the White House, located
  at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC, on October 7."

If the request is successful, the server returns a response in JSON format:

{
  "entities": [
    {
      "name": "Trump",
      "type": "PERSON",
      "metadata": {
        "mid": "/m/0cqt90",
        "wikipedia_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump"
      },
      "salience": 0.7936003,
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "Trump",
            "beginOffset": 10
          },
          "type": "PROPER"
        },
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "President",
            "beginOffset": 0
          },
          "type": "COMMON"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "White House",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {
        "mid": "/m/081sq",
        "wikipedia_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House"
      },
      "salience": 0.09172433,
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "White House",
            "beginOffset": 36
          },
          "type": "PROPER"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Pennsylvania Ave NW",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {
        "mid": "/g/1tgb87cq"
      },
      "salience": 0.085507184,
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "Pennsylvania Ave NW",
            "beginOffset": 65
          },
          "type": "PROPER"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Washington, DC",
      "type": "LOCATION",
      "metadata": {
        "mid": "/m/0rh6k",
        "wikipedia_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C."
      },
      "salience": 0.029168168,
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "Washington, DC",
            "beginOffset": 86
          },
          "type": "PROPER"
        }
      ]
    }
    {
      "name": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
      "type": "ADDRESS",
      "metadata": {
        "country": "US",
        "sublocality": "Fort Lesley J. McNair",
        "locality": "Washington",
        "street_name": "Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest",
        "broad_region": "District of Columbia",
        "narrow_region": "District of Columbia",
        "street_number": "1600"
      },
      "salience": 0,
      "mentions": [
        {
          "text": {
            "content": "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
            "beginOffset": 60
          },
          "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN"
        }
      ]
      }
    }
    {
      "name": "1600",
       "type": "NUMBER",
       "metadata": {
           "value": "1600"
       },
       "salience": 0,
       "mentions": [
         {
          "text": {
              "content": "1600",
              "beginOffset": 60
           },
           "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN"
        }
     ]
     },
     {
       "name": "October 7",
       "type": "DATE",
       "metadata": {
         "day": "7",
         "month": "10"
       },
       "salience": 0,
       "mentions": [
         {
           "text": {
             "content": "October 7",
             "beginOffset": 105
            },
           "type": "TYPE_UNKNOWN"
         }
       ]
     }
     {
       "name": "7",
       "type": "NUMBER",
       "metadata": {
         "value": "7"
       },
       "salience": 0,
       "mentions": [
         {
           "text": {