Haystack docs home page

Module base

Pipeline

class Pipeline()

Pipeline brings together building blocks to build a complex search pipeline with Haystack and user-defined components.

Under the hood, a Pipeline is represented as a directed acyclic graph of component nodes. You can use it for custom query flows with the option to branch queries (for example, extractive question answering and keyword match query), merge candidate documents for a Reader from multiple Retrievers, or re-ranking of candidate documents.

Pipeline.root_node

@property
def root_node() -> Optional[str]

Returns the root node of the pipeline's graph.

Pipeline.components

@property
def components() -> Dict[str, BaseComponent]

Returns all components used by this pipeline. Note that this also includes such components that are being utilized by other components only and are not being used as a pipeline node directly.

Pipeline.to_code

def to_code(pipeline_variable_name: str = "pipeline", generate_imports: bool = True, add_comment: bool = False) -> str

Returns the code to create this pipeline as string.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_variable_name: The variable name of the generated pipeline. Default value is 'pipeline'.
  • generate_imports: Whether to include the required import statements into the code. Default value is True.
  • add_comment: Whether to add a preceding comment that this code has been generated. Default value is False.

Pipeline.to_notebook_cell

def to_notebook_cell(pipeline_variable_name: str = "pipeline", generate_imports: bool = True, add_comment: bool = True)

Creates a new notebook cell with the code to create this pipeline.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_variable_name: The variable name of the generated pipeline. Default value is 'pipeline'.
  • generate_imports: Whether to include the required import statements into the code. Default value is True.
  • add_comment: Whether to add a preceding comment that this code has been generated. Default value is True.

Pipeline.load_from_deepset_cloud

@classmethod
def load_from_deepset_cloud(cls, pipeline_config_name: str, pipeline_name: str = "query", workspace: str = "default", api_key: Optional[str] = None, api_endpoint: Optional[str] = None, overwrite_with_env_variables: bool = False)

Load Pipeline from Deepset Cloud defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single config can declare multiple Pipelines, in which case an explicit pipeline_name must be passed.

In order to get a list of all available pipeline_config_names, call list_pipelines_on_deepset_cloud(). Use the returned name as pipeline_config_name.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config_name: name of the config file inside the Deepset Cloud workspace. To get a list of all available pipeline_config_names, call list_pipelines_on_deepset_cloud().
  • pipeline_name: specifies which pipeline to load from config. Deepset Cloud typically provides a 'query' and a 'index' pipeline per config.
  • workspace: workspace in Deepset Cloud
  • api_key: Secret value of the API key. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_KEY environment variable.
  • api_endpoint: The URL of the Deepset Cloud API. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_ENDPOINT environment variable.
  • overwrite_with_env_variables: Overwrite the config with environment variables. For example, to change return_no_answer param for a FARMReader, an env variable 'READER_PARAMS_RETURN_NO_ANSWER=False' can be set. Note that an _ sign must be used to specify nested hierarchical properties.

Pipeline.list_pipelines_on_deepset_cloud

@classmethod
def list_pipelines_on_deepset_cloud(cls, workspace: str = "default", api_key: Optional[str] = None, api_endpoint: Optional[str] = None) -> List[dict]

Lists all pipeline configs available on Deepset Cloud.

Arguments:

  • workspace: workspace in Deepset Cloud
  • api_key: Secret value of the API key. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_KEY environment variable.
  • api_endpoint: The URL of the Deepset Cloud API. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_ENDPOINT environment variable.

Returns: list of dictionaries: List[dict] each dictionary: { "name": str -> pipeline_config_name to be used in load_from_deepset_cloud(), "..." -> additional pipeline meta information } example: [{'name': 'my_super_nice_pipeline_config', 'pipeline_id': '2184e0c1-c6ec-40a1-9b28-5d2768e5efa2', 'status': 'DEPLOYED', 'created_at': '2022-02-01T09:57:03.803991+00:00', 'deleted': False, 'is_default': False, 'indexing': {'status': 'IN_PROGRESS', 'pending_file_count': 3, 'total_file_count': 31}}]

Pipeline.save_to_deepset_cloud

@classmethod
def save_to_deepset_cloud(cls, query_pipeline: Pipeline, index_pipeline: Pipeline, pipeline_config_name: str, workspace: str = "default", api_key: Optional[str] = None, api_endpoint: Optional[str] = None, overwrite: bool = False)

Saves a Pipeline config to Deepset Cloud defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single config must declare a query pipeline and a index pipeline.

Arguments:

  • query_pipeline: the query pipeline to save.
  • index_pipeline: the index pipeline to save.
  • pipeline_config_name: name of the config file inside the Deepset Cloud workspace.
  • workspace: workspace in Deepset Cloud
  • api_key: Secret value of the API key. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_KEY environment variable.
  • api_endpoint: The URL of the Deepset Cloud API. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_ENDPOINT environment variable.
  • overwrite: Whether to overwrite the config if it already exists. Otherwise an error is being raised.

Pipeline.deploy_on_deepset_cloud

@classmethod
def deploy_on_deepset_cloud(cls, pipeline_config_name: str, workspace: str = "default", api_key: Optional[str] = None, api_endpoint: Optional[str] = None, timeout: int = 60, show_curl_message: bool = True)

Deploys the pipelines of a pipeline config on Deepset Cloud.

Blocks until pipelines are successfully deployed, deployment failed or timeout exceeds. If pipelines are already deployed no action will be taken and an info will be logged. If timeout exceeds a TimeoutError will be raised. If deployment fails a DeepsetCloudError will be raised.

Pipeline config must be present on Deepset Cloud. See save_to_deepset_cloud() for more information.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config_name: name of the config file inside the Deepset Cloud workspace.
  • workspace: workspace in Deepset Cloud
  • api_key: Secret value of the API key. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_KEY environment variable.
  • api_endpoint: The URL of the Deepset Cloud API. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_ENDPOINT environment variable.
  • timeout: The time in seconds to wait until deployment completes. If the timeout is exceeded an error will be raised.
  • show_curl_message: Whether to print an additional message after successful deployment showing how to query the pipeline using curl.

Pipeline.undeploy_on_deepset_cloud

@classmethod
def undeploy_on_deepset_cloud(cls, pipeline_config_name: str, workspace: str = "default", api_key: Optional[str] = None, api_endpoint: Optional[str] = None, timeout: int = 60)

Undeploys the pipelines of a pipeline config on Deepset Cloud.

Blocks until pipelines are successfully undeployed, undeployment failed or timeout exceeds. If pipelines are already undeployed no action will be taken and an info will be logged. If timeout exceeds a TimeoutError will be raised. If deployment fails a DeepsetCloudError will be raised.

Pipeline config must be present on Deepset Cloud. See save_to_deepset_cloud() for more information.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config_name: name of the config file inside the Deepset Cloud workspace.
  • workspace: workspace in Deepset Cloud
  • api_key: Secret value of the API key. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_KEY environment variable.
  • api_endpoint: The URL of the Deepset Cloud API. If not specified, will be read from DEEPSET_CLOUD_API_ENDPOINT environment variable.
  • timeout: The time in seconds to wait until undeployment completes. If the timeout is exceeded an error will be raised.

Pipeline.add_node

def add_node(component: BaseComponent, name: str, inputs: List[str])

Add a new node to the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • component: The object to be called when the data is passed to the node. It can be a Haystack component (like Retriever, Reader, or Generator) or a user-defined object that implements a run() method to process incoming data from predecessor node.
  • name: The name for the node. It must not contain any dots.
  • inputs: A list of inputs to the node. If the predecessor node has a single outgoing edge, just the name of node is sufficient. For instance, a 'BM25Retriever' node would always output a single edge with a list of documents. It can be represented as ["BM25Retriever"].

In cases when the predecessor node has multiple outputs, e.g., a "QueryClassifier", the output must be specified explicitly as "QueryClassifier.output_2".

Pipeline.get_node

def get_node(name: str) -> Optional[BaseComponent]

Get a node from the Pipeline.

Arguments:

  • name: The name of the node.

Pipeline.set_node

def set_node(name: str, component)

Set the component for a node in the Pipeline.

Arguments:

  • name: The name of the node.
  • component: The component object to be set at the node.

Pipeline.run

def run(query: Optional[str] = None, file_paths: Optional[List[str]] = None, labels: Optional[MultiLabel] = None, documents: Optional[List[Document]] = None, meta: Optional[Union[dict, List[dict]]] = None, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Runs the Pipeline, one node at a time.

Arguments:

  • query: The search query (for query pipelines only).
  • file_paths: The files to index (for indexing pipelines only).
  • labels: Ground-truth labels that you can use to perform an isolated evaluation of pipelines. These labels are input to nodes in the pipeline.
  • documents: A list of Document objects to be processed by the Pipeline Nodes.
  • meta: Files' metadata. Used in indexing pipelines in combination with file_paths.
  • params: Dictionary of parameters to be dispatched to the nodes. To pass a parameter to all Nodes, use: {"top_k": 10}. To pass a parameter to targeted Nodes, run: {"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 3, "debug": True}}
  • debug: Specifies whether the Pipeline should instruct Nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default, this information includes the input parameters the Nodes received and the output they generated. You can then find all debug information in the dictionary returned by this method under the key _debug.

Pipeline.run_batch

def run_batch(queries: List[str] = None, file_paths: Optional[List[str]] = None, labels: Optional[Union[MultiLabel, List[MultiLabel]]] = None, documents: Optional[Union[List[Document], List[List[Document]]]] = None, meta: Optional[Union[Dict[str, Any], List[Dict[str, Any]]]] = None, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Runs the Pipeline in a batch mode, one node at a time. The batch mode means that the Pipeline can take more than one query as input. You can use this method for query pipelines only. When used with an indexing pipeline, it calls the pipeline run() method.

Here's what this method returns for Retriever-Reader pipelines:

  • Single query: Retrieves top-k relevant Documents and returns a list of answers for each retrieved Document.
  • A list of queries: Retrieves top-k relevant Documents for each query and returns a list of answers for each query.

Here's what this method returns for Reader-only pipelines:

  • Single query + a list of Documents: Applies the query to each Document individually and returns answers for each single Document.
  • Single query + a list of lists of Documents: Applies the query to each list of Documents and returns aggregated answers for each list of Documents.
  • A list of queries + a list of Documents: Applies each query to each Document individually and returns answers for each query-document pair.
  • A list of queries + a list of lists of Documents: Applies each query to its corresponding Document list and aggregates answers for each list of Documents.

Arguments:

  • queries: List of search queries (for query pipelines only).
  • file_paths: The files to index (for indexing pipelines only). If you provide file_paths the Pipeline's run method instead of run_batch is called.
  • labels: Ground-truth labels that you can use to perform an isolated evaluation of pipelines. These labels are input to nodes in the pipeline.
  • documents: A list of Document objects or a list of lists of Document objects to be processed by the Pipeline Nodes.
  • meta: Files' metadata. Used in indexing pipelines in combination with file_paths.
  • params: Dictionary of parameters to be dispatched to the nodes. To pass a parameter to all Nodes, use: {"top_k": 10}. To pass a parameter to targeted Nodes, run: {"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 3, "debug": True}}
  • debug: Specifies whether the Pipeline should instruct Nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default, this information includes the input parameters the Nodes received and the output they generated. You can then find all debug information in the dictionary returned by this method under the key _debug.

Pipeline.eval_beir

@classmethod
def eval_beir(cls, index_pipeline: Pipeline, query_pipeline: Pipeline, index_params: dict = {}, query_params: dict = {}, dataset: str = "scifact", dataset_dir: Path = Path("."), top_k_values: List[int] = [1, 3, 5, 10, 100, 1000], keep_index: bool = False) -> Tuple[Dict[str, float], Dict[str, float], Dict[str, float], Dict[str, float]]

Runs information retrieval evaluation of a pipeline using BEIR on a specified BEIR dataset.

See https://github.com/beir-cellar/beir for more information.

Arguments:

  • index_pipeline: The indexing pipeline to use.
  • query_pipeline: The query pipeline to evaluate.
  • index_params: The params to use during indexing (see pipeline.run's params).
  • query_params: The params to use during querying (see pipeline.run's params).
  • dataset: The BEIR dataset to use.
  • dataset_dir: The directory to store the dataset to.
  • top_k_values: The top_k values each metric will be calculated for.
  • keep_index: Whether to keep the index after evaluation. If True the index will be kept after beir evaluation. Otherwise it will be deleted immediately afterwards. Defaults to False.

Returns a tuple containing the ncdg, map, recall and precision scores. Each metric is represented by a dictionary containing the scores for each top_k value.

Pipeline.execute_eval_run

@classmethod
def execute_eval_run(cls, index_pipeline: Pipeline, query_pipeline: Pipeline, evaluation_set_labels: List[MultiLabel], corpus_file_paths: List[str], experiment_name: str, experiment_run_name: str, experiment_tracking_tool: Literal["mlflow", None] = None, experiment_tracking_uri: Optional[str] = None, corpus_file_metas: List[Dict[str, Any]] = None, corpus_meta: Dict[str, Any] = {}, evaluation_set_meta: Dict[str, Any] = {}, pipeline_meta: Dict[str, Any] = {}, index_params: dict = {}, query_params: dict = {}, sas_model_name_or_path: str = None, sas_batch_size: int = 32, sas_use_gpu: bool = True, add_isolated_node_eval: bool = False, reuse_index: bool = False, custom_document_id_field: Optional[str] = None, document_scope: Literal[
            "document_id",
            "context",
            "document_id_and_context",
            "document_id_or_context",
            "answer",
            "document_id_or_answer",
        ] = "document_id_or_answer", answer_scope: Literal["any", "context", "document_id", "document_id_and_context"] = "any", context_matching_min_length: int = 100, context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: bool = True, context_matching_threshold: float = 65.0) -> EvaluationResult

Starts an experiment run that first indexes the specified files (forming a corpus) using the index pipeline

and subsequently evaluates the query pipeline on the provided labels (forming an evaluation set) using pipeline.eval(). Parameters and results (metrics and predictions) of the run are tracked by an experiment tracking tool for further analysis. You can specify the experiment tracking tool by setting the params experiment_tracking_tool and experiment_tracking_uri or by passing a (custom) tracking head to Tracker.set_tracking_head(). Note, that experiment_tracking_tool only supports mlflow currently.

For easier comparison you can pass additional metadata regarding corpus (corpus_meta), evaluation set (evaluation_set_meta) and pipelines (pipeline_meta). E.g. you can give them names or ids to identify them across experiment runs.

This method executes an experiment run. Each experiment run is part of at least one experiment. An experiment typically consists of multiple runs to be compared (e.g. using different retrievers in query pipeline). Experiment tracking tools usually share the same concepts of experiments and provide additional functionality to easily compare runs across experiments.

E.g. you can call execute_eval_run() multiple times with different retrievers in your query pipeline and compare the runs in mlflow:

|   for retriever_type, query_pipeline in zip(["sparse", "dpr", "embedding"], [sparse_pipe, dpr_pipe, embedding_pipe]):
    |       eval_result = Pipeline.execute_eval_run(
    |           index_pipeline=index_pipeline,
    |           query_pipeline=query_pipeline,
    |           evaluation_set_labels=labels,
    |           corpus_file_paths=file_paths,
    |           corpus_file_metas=file_metas,
    |           experiment_tracking_tool="mlflow",
    |           experiment_tracking_uri="http://localhost:5000",
    |           experiment_name="my-retriever-experiment",
    |           experiment_run_name=f"run_{retriever_type}",
    |           pipeline_meta={"name": f"my-pipeline-{retriever_type}"},
    |           evaluation_set_meta={"name": "my-evalset"},
    |           corpus_meta={"name": "my-corpus"}.
    |           reuse_index=False
    |       )

Arguments:

  • index_pipeline: The indexing pipeline to use.
  • query_pipeline: The query pipeline to evaluate.
  • evaluation_set_labels: The labels to evaluate on forming an evaluation set.
  • corpus_file_paths: The files to be indexed and searched during evaluation forming a corpus.
  • experiment_name: The name of the experiment
  • experiment_run_name: The name of the experiment run
  • experiment_tracking_tool: The experiment tracking tool to be used. Currently we only support "mlflow". If left unset the current TrackingHead specified by Tracker.set_tracking_head() will be used.
  • experiment_tracking_uri: The uri of the experiment tracking server to be used. Must be specified if experiment_tracking_tool is set. You can use deepset's public mlflow server via https://public-mlflow.deepset.ai/. Note, that artifact logging (e.g. Pipeline YAML or evaluation result CSVs) are currently not allowed on deepset's public mlflow server as this might expose sensitive data.
  • corpus_file_metas: The optional metadata to be stored for each corpus file (e.g. title).
  • corpus_meta: Metadata about the corpus to track (e.g. name, date, author, version).
  • evaluation_set_meta: Metadata about the evalset to track (e.g. name, date, author, version).
  • pipeline_meta: Metadata about the pipelines to track (e.g. name, author, version).
  • index_params: The params to use during indexing (see pipeline.run's params).
  • query_params: The params to use during querying (see pipeline.run's params).
  • sas_model_name_or_path: Name or path of "Semantic Answer Similarity (SAS) model". When set, the model will be used to calculate similarity between predictions and labels and generate the SAS metric. The SAS metric correlates better with human judgement of correct answers as it does not rely on string overlaps. Example: Prediction = "30%", Label = "thirty percent", EM and F1 would be overly pessimistic with both being 0, while SAS paints a more realistic picture. More info in the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06130 Models:
  • You can use Bi Encoders (sentence transformers) or cross encoders trained on Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) data. Not all cross encoders can be used because of different return types. If you use custom cross encoders please make sure they work with sentence_transformers.CrossEncoder class
  • Good default for multiple languages: "sentence-transformers/paraphrase-multilingual-mpnet-base-v2"
  • Large, powerful, but slow model for English only: "cross-encoder/stsb-roberta-large"
  • Large model for German only: "deepset/gbert-large-sts"
  • sas_batch_size: Number of prediction label pairs to encode at once by CrossEncoder or SentenceTransformer while calculating SAS.
  • sas_use_gpu: Whether to use a GPU or the CPU for calculating semantic answer similarity. Falls back to CPU if no GPU is available.
  • add_isolated_node_eval: If set to True, in addition to the integrated evaluation of the pipeline, each node is evaluated in isolated evaluation mode. This mode helps to understand the bottlenecks of a pipeline in terms of output quality of each individual node. If a node performs much better in the isolated evaluation than in the integrated evaluation, the previous node needs to be optimized to improve the pipeline's performance. If a node's performance is similar in both modes, this node itself needs to be optimized to improve the pipeline's performance. The isolated evaluation calculates the upper bound of each node's evaluation metrics under the assumption that it received perfect inputs from the previous node. To this end, labels are used as input to the node instead of the output of the previous node in the pipeline. The generated dataframes in the EvaluationResult then contain additional rows, which can be distinguished from the integrated evaluation results based on the values "integrated" or "isolated" in the column "eval_mode" and the evaluation report then additionally lists the upper bound of each node's evaluation metrics.
  • reuse_index: Whether to reuse existing non-empty index and to keep the index after evaluation. If True the index will be kept after evaluation and no indexing will take place if index has already documents. Otherwise it will be deleted immediately afterwards. Defaults to False.
  • custom_document_id_field: Custom field name within Document's meta which identifies the document and is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels during evaluation. This is especially useful if you want to match documents on other criteria (e.g. file names) than the default document ids as these could be heavily influenced by preprocessing. If not set (default) the Document's id is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels.
  • document_scope: A criterion for deciding whether documents are relevant or not. You can select between:
  • 'document_id': Specifies that the document ID must match. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param. A typical use case is Document Retrieval.
  • 'context': Specifies that the content of the document must match. Uses fuzzy matching (see context_matching_... params). A typical use case is Document-Independent Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_and_context': A Boolean operation specifying that both 'document_id' AND 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document-Specific Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_or_context': A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document Retrieval having sparse context labels.
  • 'answer': Specifies that the document contents must include the answer. The selected answer_scope is enforced automatically. A typical use case is Question Answering.
  • 'document_id_or_answer' (default): A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'answer' must match. This is intended to be a proper default value in order to support both main use cases: - Document Retrieval - Question Answering The default value is 'document_id_or_answer'.
  • answer_scope: Specifies the scope in which a matching answer is considered correct. You can select between:
  • 'any' (default): Any matching answer is considered correct.
  • 'context': The answer is only considered correct if its context matches as well. Uses fuzzy matching (see context_matching_... params).
  • 'document_id': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID matches as well. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param.
  • 'document_id_and_context': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID and its context match as well. The default value is 'any'. In Question Answering, to enforce that the retrieved document is considered correct whenever the answer is correct, set document_scope to 'answer' or 'document_id_or_answer'.
  • context_matching_min_length: The minimum string length context and candidate need to have in order to be scored. Returns 0.0 otherwise.
  • context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: Whether to boost split overlaps (e.g. [AB] <-> [BC]) that result from different preprocessing params. If we detect that the score is near a half match and the matching part of the candidate is at its boundaries we cut the context on the same side, recalculate the score and take the mean of both. Thus [AB] <-> [BC] (score ~50) gets recalculated with B <-> B (score ~100) scoring ~75 in total.
  • context_matching_threshold: Score threshold that candidates must surpass to be included into the result list. Range: [0,100]

Pipeline.eval

@send_event
def eval(labels: List[MultiLabel], documents: Optional[List[List[Document]]] = None, params: Optional[dict] = None, sas_model_name_or_path: str = None, sas_batch_size: int = 32, sas_use_gpu: bool = True, add_isolated_node_eval: bool = False, custom_document_id_field: Optional[str] = None, context_matching_min_length: int = 100, context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: bool = True, context_matching_threshold: float = 65.0) -> EvaluationResult

Evaluates the pipeline by running the pipeline once per query in debug mode

and putting together all data that is needed for evaluation, e.g. calculating metrics.

If you want to calculate SAS (Semantic Answer Similarity) metrics, you have to specify sas_model_name_or_path.

You will be able to control the scope within which an answer or a document is considered correct afterwards (See document_scope and answer_scope params in EvaluationResult.calculate_metrics()). Some of these scopes require additional information that already needs to be specified during eval():

  • custom_document_id_field param to select a custom document ID from document's meta data for ID matching (only affects 'document_id' scopes)
  • context_matching_... param to fine-tune the fuzzy matching mechanism that determines whether some text contexts match each other (only affects 'context' scopes, default values should work most of the time)

Arguments:

  • labels: The labels to evaluate on
  • documents: List of List of Document that the first node in the pipeline should get as input per multilabel. Can be used to evaluate a pipeline that consists of a reader without a retriever.
  • params: Dictionary of parameters to be dispatched to the nodes. If you want to pass a param to all nodes, you can just use: {"top_k":10} If you want to pass it to targeted nodes, you can do: {"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 3, "debug": True}}
  • sas_model_name_or_path: Name or path of "Semantic Answer Similarity (SAS) model". When set, the model will be used to calculate similarity between predictions and labels and generate the SAS metric. The SAS metric correlates better with human judgement of correct answers as it does not rely on string overlaps. Example: Prediction = "30%", Label = "thirty percent", EM and F1 would be overly pessimistic with both being 0, while SAS paints a more realistic picture. More info in the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06130 Models:
  • You can use Bi Encoders (sentence transformers) or cross encoders trained on Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) data. Not all cross encoders can be used because of different return types. If you use custom cross encoders please make sure they work with sentence_transformers.CrossEncoder class
  • Good default for multiple languages: "sentence-transformers/paraphrase-multilingual-mpnet-base-v2"
  • Large, powerful, but slow model for English only: "cross-encoder/stsb-roberta-large"
  • Large model for German only: "deepset/gbert-large-sts"
  • sas_batch_size: Number of prediction label pairs to encode at once by CrossEncoder or SentenceTransformer while calculating SAS.
  • sas_use_gpu: Whether to use a GPU or the CPU for calculating semantic answer similarity. Falls back to CPU if no GPU is available.
  • add_isolated_node_eval: If set to True, in addition to the integrated evaluation of the pipeline, each node is evaluated in isolated evaluation mode. This mode helps to understand the bottlenecks of a pipeline in terms of output quality of each individual node. If a node performs much better in the isolated evaluation than in the integrated evaluation, the previous node needs to be optimized to improve the pipeline's performance. If a node's performance is similar in both modes, this node itself needs to be optimized to improve the pipeline's performance. The isolated evaluation calculates the upper bound of each node's evaluation metrics under the assumption that it received perfect inputs from the previous node. To this end, labels are used as input to the node instead of the output of the previous node in the pipeline. The generated dataframes in the EvaluationResult then contain additional rows, which can be distinguished from the integrated evaluation results based on the values "integrated" or "isolated" in the column "eval_mode" and the evaluation report then additionally lists the upper bound of each node's evaluation metrics.
  • custom_document_id_field: Custom field name within Document's meta which identifies the document and is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels during evaluation. This is especially useful if you want to match documents on other criteria (e.g. file names) than the default document ids as these could be heavily influenced by preprocessing. If not set (default) the Document's id is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels.
  • context_matching_min_length: The minimum string length context and candidate need to have in order to be scored. Returns 0.0 otherwise.
  • context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: Whether to boost split overlaps (e.g. [AB] <-> [BC]) that result from different preprocessing params. If we detect that the score is near a half match and the matching part of the candidate is at its boundaries we cut the context on the same side, recalculate the score and take the mean of both. Thus [AB] <-> [BC] (score ~50) gets recalculated with B <-> B (score ~100) scoring ~75 in total.
  • context_matching_threshold: Score threshold that candidates must surpass to be included into the result list. Range: [0,100]

Pipeline.get_nodes_by_class

def get_nodes_by_class(class_type) -> List[Any]

Gets all nodes in the pipeline that are an instance of a certain class (incl. subclasses).

This is for example helpful if you loaded a pipeline and then want to interact directly with the document store. Example: | from haystack.document_stores.base import BaseDocumentStore | INDEXING_PIPELINE = Pipeline.load_from_yaml(Path(PIPELINE_YAML_PATH), pipeline_name=INDEXING_PIPELINE_NAME) | res = INDEXING_PIPELINE.get_nodes_by_class(class_type=BaseDocumentStore)

Returns:

List of components that are an instance the requested class

Pipeline.get_document_store

def get_document_store() -> Optional[BaseDocumentStore]

Return the document store object used in the current pipeline.

Returns:

Instance of DocumentStore or None

Pipeline.draw

def draw(path: Path = Path("pipeline.png"))

Create a Graphviz visualization of the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • path: the path to save the image.

Pipeline.load_from_yaml

@classmethod
def load_from_yaml(cls, path: Path, pipeline_name: Optional[str] = None, overwrite_with_env_variables: bool = True, strict_version_check: bool = False)

Load Pipeline from a YAML file defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single YAML can declare multiple Pipelines, in which case an explicit pipeline_name must be passed.

Here's a sample configuration:

```yaml
|   version: &#39;1.0.0&#39;
|
|    components:    # define all the building-blocks for Pipeline
|    - name: MyReader       # custom-name for the component; helpful for visualization &amp; debugging
|      type: FARMReader    # Haystack Class name for the component
|      params:
|        no_ans_boost: -10
|        model_name_or_path: deepset/roberta-base-squad2
|    - name: MyESRetriever
|      type: BM25Retriever
|      params:
|        document_store: MyDocumentStore    # params can reference other components defined in the YAML
|        custom_query: null
|    - name: MyDocumentStore
|      type: ElasticsearchDocumentStore
|      params:
|        index: haystack_test
|
|    pipelines:    # multiple Pipelines can be defined using the components from above
|    - name: my_query_pipeline    # a simple extractive-qa Pipeline
|      nodes:
|      - name: MyESRetriever
|        inputs: [Query]
|      - name: MyReader
|        inputs: [MyESRetriever]
```

Note that, in case of a mismatch in version between Haystack and the YAML, a warning will be printed. If the pipeline loads correctly regardless, save again the pipeline using Pipeline.save_to_yaml() to remove the warning.

Arguments:

  • path: path of the YAML file.
  • pipeline_name: if the YAML contains multiple pipelines, the pipeline_name to load must be set.
  • overwrite_with_env_variables: Overwrite the YAML configuration with environment variables. For example, to change index name param for an ElasticsearchDocumentStore, an env variable 'MYDOCSTORE_PARAMS_INDEX=documents-2021' can be set. Note that an _ sign must be used to specify nested hierarchical properties.
  • strict_version_check: whether to fail in case of a version mismatch (throws a warning otherwise)

Pipeline.load_from_config

@classmethod
def load_from_config(cls, pipeline_config: Dict, pipeline_name: Optional[str] = None, overwrite_with_env_variables: bool = True, strict_version_check: bool = False)

Load Pipeline from a config dict defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single config can declare multiple Pipelines, in which case an explicit pipeline_name must be passed.

Here's a sample configuration:

```python
|   {
|       &quot;version&quot;: &quot;ignore&quot;,
|       &quot;components&quot;: [
|           {  # define all the building-blocks for Pipeline
|               &quot;name&quot;: &quot;MyReader&quot;,  # custom-name for the component; helpful for visualization &amp; debugging
|               &quot;type&quot;: &quot;FARMReader&quot;,  # Haystack Class name for the component
|               &quot;params&quot;: {&quot;no_ans_boost&quot;: -10, &quot;model_name_or_path&quot;: &quot;deepset/roberta-base-squad2&quot;},
|           },
|           {
|               &quot;name&quot;: &quot;MyESRetriever&quot;,
|               &quot;type&quot;: &quot;BM25Retriever&quot;,
|               &quot;params&quot;: {
|                   &quot;document_store&quot;: &quot;MyDocumentStore&quot;,  # params can reference other components defined in the YAML
|                   &quot;custom_query&quot;: None,
|               },
|           },
|           {&quot;name&quot;: &quot;MyDocumentStore&quot;, &quot;type&quot;: &quot;ElasticsearchDocumentStore&quot;, &quot;params&quot;: {&quot;index&quot;: &quot;haystack_test&quot;}},
|       ],
|       &quot;pipelines&quot;: [
|           {  # multiple Pipelines can be defined using the components from above
|               &quot;name&quot;: &quot;my_query_pipeline&quot;,  # a simple extractive-qa Pipeline
|               &quot;nodes&quot;: [
|                   {&quot;name&quot;: &quot;MyESRetriever&quot;, &quot;inputs&quot;: [&quot;Query&quot;]},
|                   {&quot;name&quot;: &quot;MyReader&quot;, &quot;inputs&quot;: [&quot;MyESRetriever&quot;]},
|               ],
|           }
|       ],
|   }
```

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config: the pipeline config as dict
  • pipeline_name: if the config contains multiple pipelines, the pipeline_name to load must be set.
  • overwrite_with_env_variables: Overwrite the configuration with environment variables. For example, to change index name param for an ElasticsearchDocumentStore, an env variable 'MYDOCSTORE_PARAMS_INDEX=documents-2021' can be set. Note that an _ sign must be used to specify nested hierarchical properties.
  • strict_version_check: whether to fail in case of a version mismatch (throws a warning otherwise).

Pipeline.save_to_yaml

def save_to_yaml(path: Path, return_defaults: bool = False)

Save a YAML configuration for the Pipeline that can be used with Pipeline.load_from_yaml().

Arguments:

  • path: path of the output YAML file.
  • return_defaults: whether to output parameters that have the default values.

Pipeline.get_config

def get_config(return_defaults: bool = False) -> dict

Returns a configuration for the Pipeline that can be used with Pipeline.load_from_config().

Arguments:

  • return_defaults: whether to output parameters that have the default values.

Pipeline.print_eval_report

def print_eval_report(eval_result: EvaluationResult, n_wrong_examples: int = 3, metrics_filter: Optional[Dict[str, List[str]]] = None, document_scope: Literal[
            "document_id",
            "context",
            "document_id_and_context",
            "document_id_or_context",
            "answer",
            "document_id_or_answer",
        ] = "document_id_or_answer", answer_scope: Literal["any", "context", "document_id", "document_id_and_context"] = "any")

Prints evaluation report containing a metrics funnel and worst queries for further analysis.

Arguments:

  • eval_result: The evaluation result, can be obtained by running eval().
  • n_wrong_examples: The number of worst queries to show.
  • metrics_filter: The metrics to show per node. If None all metrics will be shown.
  • document_scope: A criterion for deciding whether documents are relevant or not. You can select between:
  • 'document_id': Specifies that the document ID must match. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param. A typical use case is Document Retrieval.
  • 'context': Specifies that the content of the document must match. Uses fuzzy matching (see pipeline.eval()'s context_matching_... params). A typical use case is Document-Independent Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_and_context': A Boolean operation specifying that both 'document_id' AND 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document-Specific Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_or_context': A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document Retrieval having sparse context labels.
  • 'answer': Specifies that the document contents must include the answer. The selected answer_scope is enforced automatically. A typical use case is Question Answering.
  • 'document_id_or_answer' (default): A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'answer' must match. This is intended to be a proper default value in order to support both main use cases: - Document Retrieval - Question Answering The default value is 'document_id_or_answer'.
  • answer_scope: Specifies the scope in which a matching answer is considered correct. You can select between:
  • 'any' (default): Any matching answer is considered correct.
  • 'context': The answer is only considered correct if its context matches as well. Uses fuzzy matching (see pipeline.eval()'s context_matching_... params).
  • 'document_id': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID matches as well. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param.
  • 'document_id_and_context': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID and its context match as well. The default value is 'any'. In Question Answering, to enforce that the retrieved document is considered correct whenever the answer is correct, set document_scope to 'answer' or 'document_id_or_answer'.

_HaystackBeirRetrieverAdapter

class _HaystackBeirRetrieverAdapter()

_HaystackBeirRetrieverAdapter.__init__

def __init__(index_pipeline: Pipeline, query_pipeline: Pipeline, index_params: dict, query_params: dict)

Adapter mimicking a BEIR retriever used by BEIR's EvaluateRetrieval class to run BEIR evaluations on Haystack Pipelines.

This has nothing to do with Haystack's retriever classes. See https://github.com/beir-cellar/beir/blob/main/beir/retrieval/evaluation.py.

Arguments:

  • index_pipeline: The indexing pipeline to use.
  • query_pipeline: The query pipeline to evaluate.
  • index_params: The params to use during indexing (see pipeline.run's params).
  • query_params: The params to use during querying (see pipeline.run's params).

Module ray

RayPipeline

class RayPipeline(Pipeline)

Ray is a framework for distributed computing.

With Ray, you can distribute a Pipeline's components across a cluster of machines. The individual components of a Pipeline can be independently scaled. For instance, an extractive QA Pipeline deployment can have three replicas of the Reader and a single replica for the Retriever. This way, you can use your resources more efficiently by horizontally scaling Components.

To set the number of replicas, add replicas in the YAML configuration for the node in a pipeline:

    ```yaml
    |    components:
    |        ...
    |
    |    pipelines:
    |        - name: ray_query_pipeline
    |          type: RayPipeline
    |          nodes:
    |            - name: ESRetriever
    |              replicas: 2  # number of replicas to create on the Ray cluster
    |              inputs: [ Query ]
    ```

A Ray Pipeline can only be created with a YAML Pipeline configuration.

from haystack.pipeline import RayPipeline
pipeline = RayPipeline.load_from_yaml(path="my_pipelines.yaml", pipeline_name="my_query_pipeline")
pipeline.run(query="What is the capital of Germany?")

By default, RayPipelines create an instance of RayServe locally. To connect to an existing Ray instance, set the address parameter when creating the RayPipeline instance.

YAML definitions of Ray pipelines are validated at load. For more information, see YAML File Definitions.

RayPipeline.__init__

def __init__(address: str = None, ray_args: Optional[Dict[str, Any]] = None)

Arguments:

  • address: The IP address for the Ray cluster. If set to None, a local Ray instance is started.
  • kwargs: Optional parameters for initializing Ray.

RayPipeline.load_from_yaml

@classmethod
def load_from_yaml(cls, path: Path, pipeline_name: Optional[str] = None, overwrite_with_env_variables: bool = True, address: Optional[str] = None, strict_version_check: bool = False, ray_args: Optional[Dict[str, Any]] = None)

Load Pipeline from a YAML file defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single YAML can declare multiple Pipelines, in which case an explicit pipeline_name must be passed.

Here's a sample configuration:

```yaml
|   version: &#39;1.0.0&#39;
|
|    components:    # define all the building-blocks for Pipeline
|    - name: MyReader       # custom-name for the component; helpful for visualization &amp; debugging
|      type: FARMReader    # Haystack Class name for the component
|      params:
|        no_ans_boost: -10
|        model_name_or_path: deepset/roberta-base-squad2
|    - name: MyESRetriever
|      type: ElasticsearchRetriever
|      params:
|        document_store: MyDocumentStore    # params can reference other components defined in the YAML
|        custom_query: null
|    - name: MyDocumentStore
|      type: ElasticsearchDocumentStore
|      params:
|        index: haystack_test
|
|    pipelines:    # multiple Pipelines can be defined using the components from above
|    - name: my_query_pipeline    # a simple extractive-qa Pipeline
|      type: RayPipeline
|      nodes:
|      - name: MyESRetriever
|        inputs: [Query]
|        replicas: 2    # number of replicas to create on the Ray cluster
|      - name: MyReader
|        inputs: [MyESRetriever]
```

Note that, in case of a mismatch in version between Haystack and the YAML, a warning will be printed. If the pipeline loads correctly regardless, save again the pipeline using RayPipeline.save_to_yaml() to remove the warning.

Arguments:

  • path: path of the YAML file.
  • pipeline_name: if the YAML contains multiple pipelines, the pipeline_name to load must be set.
  • overwrite_with_env_variables: Overwrite the YAML configuration with environment variables. For example, to change index name param for an ElasticsearchDocumentStore, an env variable 'MYDOCSTORE_PARAMS_INDEX=documents-2021' can be set. Note that an _ sign must be used to specify nested hierarchical properties.
  • address: The IP address for the Ray cluster. If set to None, a local Ray instance is started.

_RayDeploymentWrapper

class _RayDeploymentWrapper()

Ray Serve supports calling of init methods on the Classes to create "deployment" instances.

In case of Haystack, some Components like Retrievers have complex init methods that needs objects like Document Stores.

This wrapper class encapsulates the initialization of Components. Given a Component Class name, it creates an instance using the YAML Pipeline config.

_RayDeploymentWrapper.__init__

def __init__(pipeline_config: dict, component_name: str)

Create an instance of Component.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config: Pipeline YAML parsed as a dict.
  • component_name: Component Class name.

_RayDeploymentWrapper.__call__

def __call__(*args, **kwargs)

Ray calls this method which is then re-directed to the corresponding component's run().

_RayDeploymentWrapper.load_from_pipeline_config

@staticmethod
def load_from_pipeline_config(pipeline_config: dict, component_name: str)

Load an individual component from a YAML config for Pipelines.

Arguments:

  • pipeline_config: the Pipelines YAML config parsed as a dict.
  • component_name: the name of the component to load.

Module standard_pipelines

BaseStandardPipeline

class BaseStandardPipeline(ABC)

Base class for pre-made standard Haystack pipelines. This class does not inherit from Pipeline.

BaseStandardPipeline.add_node

def add_node(component, name: str, inputs: List[str])

Add a new node to the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • component: The object to be called when the data is passed to the node. It can be a Haystack component (like Retriever, Reader, or Generator) or a user-defined object that implements a run() method to process incoming data from predecessor node.
  • name: The name for the node. It must not contain any dots.
  • inputs: A list of inputs to the node. If the predecessor node has a single outgoing edge, just the name of node is sufficient. For instance, a 'BM25Retriever' node would always output a single edge with a list of documents. It can be represented as ["BM25Retriever"].

In cases when the predecessor node has multiple outputs, e.g., a "QueryClassifier", the output must be specified explicitly as "QueryClassifier.output_2".

BaseStandardPipeline.get_node

def get_node(name: str)

Get a node from the Pipeline.

Arguments:

  • name: The name of the node.

BaseStandardPipeline.set_node

def set_node(name: str, component)

Set the component for a node in the Pipeline.

Arguments:

  • name: The name of the node.
  • component: The component object to be set at the node.

BaseStandardPipeline.draw

def draw(path: Path = Path("pipeline.png"))

Create a Graphviz visualization of the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • path: the path to save the image.

BaseStandardPipeline.save_to_yaml

def save_to_yaml(path: Path, return_defaults: bool = False)

Save a YAML configuration for the Pipeline that can be used with Pipeline.load_from_yaml().

Arguments:

  • path: path of the output YAML file.
  • return_defaults: whether to output parameters that have the default values.

BaseStandardPipeline.load_from_yaml

@classmethod
def load_from_yaml(cls, path: Path, pipeline_name: Optional[str] = None, overwrite_with_env_variables: bool = True)

Load Pipeline from a YAML file defining the individual components and how they're tied together to form

a Pipeline. A single YAML can declare multiple Pipelines, in which case an explicit pipeline_name must be passed.

Here's a sample configuration:

```yaml
|   version: &#39;1.0.0&#39;
|
|    components:    # define all the building-blocks for Pipeline
|    - name: MyReader       # custom-name for the component; helpful for visualization &amp; debugging
|      type: FARMReader    # Haystack Class name for the component
|      params:
|        no_ans_boost: -10
|        model_name_or_path: deepset/roberta-base-squad2
|    - name: MyESRetriever
|      type: BM25Retriever
|      params:
|        document_store: MyDocumentStore    # params can reference other components defined in the YAML
|        custom_query: null
|    - name: MyDocumentStore
|      type: ElasticsearchDocumentStore
|      params:
|        index: haystack_test
|
|    pipelines:    # multiple Pipelines can be defined using the components from above
|    - name: my_query_pipeline    # a simple extractive-qa Pipeline
|      nodes:
|      - name: MyESRetriever
|        inputs: [Query]
|      - name: MyReader
|        inputs: [MyESRetriever]
```

Arguments:

  • path: path of the YAML file.
  • pipeline_name: if the YAML contains multiple pipelines, the pipeline_name to load must be set.
  • overwrite_with_env_variables: Overwrite the YAML configuration with environment variables. For example, to change index name param for an ElasticsearchDocumentStore, an env variable 'MYDOCSTORE_PARAMS_INDEX=documents-2021' can be set. Note that an _ sign must be used to specify nested hierarchical properties.

BaseStandardPipeline.get_nodes_by_class

def get_nodes_by_class(class_type) -> List[Any]

Gets all nodes in the pipeline that are an instance of a certain class (incl. subclasses).

This is for example helpful if you loaded a pipeline and then want to interact directly with the document store. Example:

| from haystack.document_stores.base import BaseDocumentStore
| INDEXING_PIPELINE = Pipeline.load_from_yaml(Path(PIPELINE_YAML_PATH), pipeline_name=INDEXING_PIPELINE_NAME)
| res = INDEXING_PIPELINE.get_nodes_by_class(class_type=BaseDocumentStore)

Returns:

List of components that are an instance of the requested class

BaseStandardPipeline.get_document_store

def get_document_store() -> Optional[BaseDocumentStore]

Return the document store object used in the current pipeline.

Returns:

Instance of DocumentStore or None

BaseStandardPipeline.eval

def eval(labels: List[MultiLabel], params: Optional[dict] = None, sas_model_name_or_path: Optional[str] = None, sas_batch_size: int = 32, sas_use_gpu: bool = True, add_isolated_node_eval: bool = False, custom_document_id_field: Optional[str] = None, context_matching_min_length: int = 100, context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: bool = True, context_matching_threshold: float = 65.0) -> EvaluationResult

Evaluates the pipeline by running the pipeline once per query in debug mode

and putting together all data that is needed for evaluation, e.g. calculating metrics.

If you want to calculate SAS (Semantic Answer Similarity) metrics, you have to specify sas_model_name_or_path.

You will be able to control the scope within which an answer or a document is considered correct afterwards (See document_scope and answer_scope params in EvaluationResult.calculate_metrics()). Some of these scopes require additional information that already needs to be specified during eval():

  • custom_document_id_field param to select a custom document ID from document's meta data for ID matching (only affects 'document_id' scopes)
  • context_matching_... param to fine-tune the fuzzy matching mechanism that determines whether some text contexts match each other (only affects 'context' scopes, default values should work most of the time)

Arguments:

  • labels: The labels to evaluate on
  • params: Params for the retriever and reader. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 5}}
  • sas_model_name_or_path: SentenceTransformers semantic textual similarity model to be used for sas value calculation, should be path or string pointing to downloadable models.
  • sas_batch_size: Number of prediction label pairs to encode at once by CrossEncoder or SentenceTransformer while calculating SAS.
  • sas_use_gpu: Whether to use a GPU or the CPU for calculating semantic answer similarity. Falls back to CPU if no GPU is available.
  • add_isolated_node_eval: Whether to additionally evaluate the reader based on labels as input instead of output of previous node in pipeline
  • custom_document_id_field: Custom field name within Document's meta which identifies the document and is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels during evaluation. This is especially useful if you want to match documents on other criteria (e.g. file names) than the default document ids as these could be heavily influenced by preprocessing. If not set (default) the Document's id is being used as criterion for matching documents to labels.
  • context_matching_min_length: The minimum string length context and candidate need to have in order to be scored. Returns 0.0 otherwise.
  • context_matching_boost_split_overlaps: Whether to boost split overlaps (e.g. [AB] <-> [BC]) that result from different preprocessing params. If we detect that the score is near a half match and the matching part of the candidate is at its boundaries we cut the context on the same side, recalculate the score and take the mean of both. Thus [AB] <-> [BC] (score ~50) gets recalculated with B <-> B (score ~100) scoring ~75 in total.
  • context_matching_threshold: Score threshold that candidates must surpass to be included into the result list. Range: [0,100]

BaseStandardPipeline.print_eval_report

def print_eval_report(eval_result: EvaluationResult, n_wrong_examples: int = 3, metrics_filter: Optional[Dict[str, List[str]]] = None, document_scope: Literal[
            "document_id",
            "context",
            "document_id_and_context",
            "document_id_or_context",
            "answer",
            "document_id_or_answer",
        ] = "document_id_or_answer", answer_scope: Literal["any", "context", "document_id", "document_id_and_context"] = "any")

Prints evaluation report containing a metrics funnel and worst queries for further analysis.

Arguments:

  • eval_result: The evaluation result, can be obtained by running eval().
  • n_wrong_examples: The number of worst queries to show.
  • metrics_filter: The metrics to show per node. If None all metrics will be shown.
  • document_scope: A criterion for deciding whether documents are relevant or not. You can select between:
  • 'document_id': Specifies that the document ID must match. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param. A typical use case is Document Retrieval.
  • 'context': Specifies that the content of the document must match. Uses fuzzy matching (see pipeline.eval()'s context_matching_... params). A typical use case is Document-Independent Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_and_context': A Boolean operation specifying that both 'document_id' AND 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document-Specific Passage Retrieval.
  • 'document_id_or_context': A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'context' must match. A typical use case is Document Retrieval having sparse context labels.
  • 'answer': Specifies that the document contents must include the answer. The selected answer_scope is enforced automatically. A typical use case is Question Answering.
  • 'document_id_or_answer' (default): A Boolean operation specifying that either 'document_id' OR 'answer' must match. This is intended to be a proper default value in order to support both main use cases: - Document Retrieval - Question Answering The default value is 'document_id_or_answer'.
  • answer_scope: Specifies the scope in which a matching answer is considered correct. You can select between:
  • 'any' (default): Any matching answer is considered correct.
  • 'context': The answer is only considered correct if its context matches as well. Uses fuzzy matching (see pipeline.eval()'s context_matching_... params).
  • 'document_id': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID matches as well. You can specify a custom document ID through pipeline.eval()'s custom_document_id_field param.
  • 'document_id_and_context': The answer is only considered correct if its document ID and its context match as well. The default value is 'any'. In Question Answering, to enforce that the retrieved document is considered correct whenever the answer is correct, set document_scope to 'answer' or 'document_id_or_answer'.

BaseStandardPipeline.run_batch

def run_batch(queries: List[str], params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Run a batch of queries through the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • queries: List of query strings.
  • params: Parameters for the individual nodes of the pipeline. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 5}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

ExtractiveQAPipeline

class ExtractiveQAPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Pipeline for Extractive Question Answering.

ExtractiveQAPipeline.__init__

def __init__(reader: BaseReader, retriever: BaseRetriever)

Arguments:

  • reader: Reader instance
  • retriever: Retriever instance

ExtractiveQAPipeline.run

def run(query: str, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Arguments:

  • query: The search query string.
  • params: Params for the retriever and reader. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Reader": {"top_k": 5}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

DocumentSearchPipeline

class DocumentSearchPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Pipeline for semantic document search.

DocumentSearchPipeline.__init__

def __init__(retriever: BaseRetriever)

Arguments:

  • retriever: Retriever instance

DocumentSearchPipeline.run

def run(query: str, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Arguments:

  • query: the query string.
  • params: params for the retriever and reader. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

GenerativeQAPipeline

class GenerativeQAPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Pipeline for Generative Question Answering.

GenerativeQAPipeline.__init__

def __init__(generator: BaseGenerator, retriever: BaseRetriever)

Arguments:

  • generator: Generator instance
  • retriever: Retriever instance

GenerativeQAPipeline.run

def run(query: str, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Arguments:

  • query: the query string.
  • params: params for the retriever and generator. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Generator": {"top_k": 5}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

SearchSummarizationPipeline

class SearchSummarizationPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Pipeline that retrieves documents for a query and then summarizes those documents.

SearchSummarizationPipeline.__init__

def __init__(summarizer: BaseSummarizer, retriever: BaseRetriever, return_in_answer_format: bool = False)

Arguments:

  • summarizer: Summarizer instance
  • retriever: Retriever instance
  • return_in_answer_format: Whether the results should be returned as documents (False) or in the answer format used in other QA pipelines (True). With the latter, you can use this pipeline as a "drop-in replacement" for other QA pipelines.

SearchSummarizationPipeline.run

def run(query: str, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Arguments:

  • query: the query string.
  • params: params for the retriever and summarizer. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Summarizer": {"generate_single_summary": True}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

SearchSummarizationPipeline.run_batch

def run_batch(queries: List[str], params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Run a batch of queries through the pipeline.

Arguments:

  • queries: List of query strings.
  • params: Parameters for the individual nodes of the pipeline. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}, "Summarizer": {"generate_single_summary": True}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

FAQPipeline

class FAQPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Pipeline for finding similar FAQs using semantic document search.

FAQPipeline.__init__

def __init__(retriever: BaseRetriever)

Arguments:

  • retriever: Retriever instance

FAQPipeline.run

def run(query: str, params: Optional[dict] = None, debug: Optional[bool] = None)

Arguments:

  • query: the query string.
  • params: params for the retriever. For instance, params={"Retriever": {"top_k": 10}}
  • debug: Whether the pipeline should instruct nodes to collect debug information about their execution. By default these include the input parameters they received and the output they generated. All debug information can then be found in the dict returned by this method under the key "_debug"

TranslationWrapperPipeline

class TranslationWrapperPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

Takes an existing search pipeline and adds one "input translation node" after the Query and one "output translation" node just before returning the results

TranslationWrapperPipeline.__init__

def __init__(input_translator: BaseTranslator, output_translator: BaseTranslator, pipeline: BaseStandardPipeline)

Wrap a given pipeline with the input_translator and output_translator.

Arguments:

  • input_translator: A Translator node that shall translate the input query from language A to B
  • output_translator: A Translator node that shall translate the pipeline results from language B to A
  • pipeline: The pipeline object (e.g. ExtractiveQAPipeline) you want to "wrap". Note that pipelines with split or merge nodes are currently not supported.

QuestionGenerationPipeline

class QuestionGenerationPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

A simple pipeline that takes documents as input and generates questions that it thinks can be answered by the documents.

RetrieverQuestionGenerationPipeline

class RetrieverQuestionGenerationPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

A simple pipeline that takes a query as input, performs retrieval, and then generates questions that it thinks can be answered by the retrieved documents.

QuestionAnswerGenerationPipeline

class QuestionAnswerGenerationPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

This is a pipeline which takes a document as input, generates questions that the model thinks can be answered by this document, and then performs question answering of this questions using that single document.

MostSimilarDocumentsPipeline

class MostSimilarDocumentsPipeline(BaseStandardPipeline)

MostSimilarDocumentsPipeline.__init__

def __init__(document_store: BaseDocumentStore)

Initialize a Pipeline for finding the most similar documents to a given document.

This pipeline can be helpful if you already show a relevant document to your end users and they want to search for just similar ones.

Arguments:

  • document_store: Document Store instance with already stored embeddings.

MostSimilarDocumentsPipeline.run

def run(document_ids: List[str], top_k: int = 5)

Arguments:

  • document_ids: document ids
  • top_k: How many documents id to return against single document

MostSimilarDocumentsPipeline.run_batch

def run_batch(document_ids: List[str], top_k: int = 5)

Arguments:

  • document_ids: document ids
  • top_k: How many documents id to return against single document