Easily deploying Apache RUTA projects as web services

// under apache_uima

TL;DR

How to easily deploy your Apache RUTA project as a web service. No (Java) coding required :-)

• dowload release, unzip and cd into it
• configure application.properties and make it point to your RUTA project
• start server bin/ruta_server and check it at http://localhost:8566/index.html

Apache RUTA

Ruta (site, documentation) is a workbench to write NLP rules and test them. Apache RUTA is a great tool, and to expose it as a REST service (and thus allowing to annotate text), I created RUTA-server. It works with Linux, OS X, Windows, and requires a Java Runtime (1.7 or higher).

First, let's create an Apache RUTA project:

• If you don't already have it: install Eclipse (download), or use your own, if recent enough.
• Install RUTA plugin
  • Help > Install New Software...
  • Work with: http://www.apache.org/dist/uima/eclipse-update-site/
  • Add...
    • Name: RUTA, OK
  • Select Apache UIMA Eclipse tooling and runtime support and Apache UIMA Ruta.
    • Next, Next, Finish
• Open Ruta Perspective
  • Window > Open Perspective > Other...
  • Select: Uima Ruta
• Create a new RUTA project
  • File > New > UIMA Ruta project, let's call it ruta_server_example.

• Create a RUTA script

  • Click on the script folder in ruta_server_example.
  • File > New > UIMA Ruta File, let's call it Example.ruta.
  • Add the following rules

    DECLARE Year;
    // find something that maybe indicates the year: a number with four digits starting with 19 or 20
    NUM{REGEXP("19..|20..") -> MARK(Year,1,2)} PM?;
    

• Add a sample document mytest.txt in input folder, with the following content

      The year 1956 should get annotated, but 21231 not (yet).
  

  • Run script
  • Open script script/Example.ruta
  • Right click, Debug As, UIMA Ruta
  • Open Console view to see progress, wait until it's <terminated>
  • View results
  • Open output/mytest.txt.xmi
    • Select Type System ExampleTypeSystem.xml
  • Click on Eclipse View Annotation Browser View (tabed window on the right)
    • Select checkboxes with the Year annotation
  • 1956 only should be highlighted

Now, let's start RUTA-server

• First, dowload the release, unzip it and cd into it.
• Then, configure application.properties
  • You need to specify the root path of the RUTA project. In our example, it is the folder in which you created the above RUTA project.
  • Also, you need to tell the name of the RUTA engine, in our case it is descriptor/ExampleEngine.xml
  • Also, we can specify which
• Finally, start the server by typing in a terminal sh bin/ruta_server
  • The web service is at http://localhost:8566/annotate.json
  • I also created a small html demo

Go Top