spaCy Model Helper (spacy.py)

Helper functions for managing spaCy models across different platforms

This module provides utilities for downloading and loading spaCy models in a platform-agnostic way. It handles the common pattern of checking if a model exists before attempting to download it, which is especially useful in notebook environments.

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ensure_spacy_model

def ensure_spacy_model(
    model_name:str='en_core_web_sm', # Name of the spaCy model to ensure is installed (default: "en_core_web_sm")
    verbose:bool=True, # Whether to print status messages (default: True)
): # The loaded spaCy model

Ensure a spaCy model is installed, downloading it if necessary.

This function checks if the specified spaCy model is available. If not, it downloads and installs the model using spaCy’s download command.

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list_installed_models

def list_installed_models(
    
): # Names of installed spaCy models

List all installed spaCy models.

Usage Example

In your notebooks, use this instead of manually checking for models:

from data401_nlp.helpers.spacy import ensure_spacy_model

# This will automatically download if not present
nlp = ensure_spacy_model("en_core_web_sm")

# Now use nlp as normal
doc = nlp("This is a test.")
print([token.text for token in doc])