README
stopword
stopword
is a module for node and the browser that allows you to strip
stopwords from an input text. In natural language processing, "Stopwords" are
words that are so frequent that they can safely be removed from a text without
altering its meaning.
Live stopword browser demo.
Usage
Node.js
sw = require('stopword')
// sw.removeStopwords and sw.[language code] now available
Script tag method
<script src="stopword.js"></script>
<script>
// sw.removeStopwords and sw.[language code] now available
</script>
Default (English)
By default, stopword
will strip an array of "meaningless" English words
sw = require('stopword')
const oldString = 'a really Interesting string with some words'.split(' ')
const newString = sw.removeStopwords(oldString)
// newString is now [ 'really', 'Interesting', 'string', 'words' ]
Other languages
You can also specify a language other than English:
sw = require('stopword')
const oldString = 'Trädgårdsägare är beredda att pröva vad som helst för att bli av med de hatade mördarsniglarna åäö'.split(' ')
// sw.sv contains swedish stopwords
const newString = sw.removeStopwords(oldString, sw.sv)
// newString is now [ 'Trädgårdsägare', 'beredda', 'pröva', 'helst', 'hatade', 'mördarsniglarna', 'åäö' ]
Custom list of stopwords
And last, but not least, it is possible to use your own, custom list of stopwords:
sw = require('stopword')
const oldString = 'you can even roll your own custom stopword list'.split(' ')
// Just add your own list/array of stopwords
const newString = sw.removeStopwords(oldString, [ 'even', 'a', 'custom', 'stopword', 'list', 'is', 'possible']
// newString is now [ 'you', 'can', 'roll', 'your', 'own']
Removing stopwords for i.e. two languages and a custom stopword list
With spread syntax you can easily combine several stopword arrays into one. Useful for situations where two langauages are used interchangeably. Or when you have certain words that are used in every document that is not in your existing stopword arrays.
sw = require('stopword')
const oldString = 'a really interesting string with some words trädgårdsägare är beredda att pröva vad som helst för att bli av med de hatade mördarsniglarna'.split(' ')
const customStopwords = ['interesting', 'really']
const newString = sw.removeStopwords(oldString, [...sw.en, ...sw.sv, ...customStopwords]
// newString is now ['string', 'words', 'trädgårdsägare', 'beredda', 'pröva', 'helst', 'hatade', 'mördarsniglarna']
API
removeStopwords
Returns an Array that represents the text with the specified stopwords removed.
text
An array of wordsstopwords
An array of stopwords
sw = require('stopword')
var text = sw.removeStopwords(text[, stopwords])
// text is now an array of given words minus specified stopwords
<language code>
Arrays of stopwords for the following 57 languages are supplied:
af
- Afrikaansar
- Arabic, Modern Standardhy
- Armenianeu
- Basquebn
- Bengalibr
- Bretonbg
- Bulgarianca
- Catalanzh
- Chinese Simplifiedhr
- Croatiancs
- Czechda
- Danishnl
- Dutchen
- Englisheo
- Esperantoet
- Estonianfa
- Farsifi
- Finnishfr
- Frenchgl
- Galiciande
- Germanel
- Greekha
- Hausahe
- Hebrewhi
- Hindihu
- Hungarianid
- Indonesianga
- Irishit
- Italianja
- Japaneseko
- Koreanla
- Latinlv
- Latvianlgg
- Lugbara (without diacritics)lggo
- Lugbara official (with diacritics)mr
- Marathimy
- Myanmarno
- Norwegianpl
- Polishpt
- Portugueseptbr
- Portuguese (Brazilian)pa
- Punjabi Gurmukhiro
- Romanianru
- Russiansk
- Slovaksl
- Slovenianso
- Somalist
- Sothoes
- Spanishsw
- Swahilisv
- Swedishth
- Thaitl
- Tagalog (Filipino)tr
- Turkishur
- Urduvi
- Vietnameseyo
- Yorubazu
- Zulu
sw = require('stopword')
norwegianStopwords = sw.no
// norwegianStopwords now contains an Array of norwgian stopwords
Languages with no space between words
ja
Japanese, th
Thai and zh
Chinese Simplified and some of the other languages supported have no space between words. For these languages you need to split the text into an array of words in another way than just textString.split(' ')
. You can check out TinySegmenter for Japanese and chinese-tokenizer for Chinese.
Your language missing?
If you can't find a stopword file for your language, you can try creating one with stopword-trainer
. We're happy to help you in the process.
Contributions
Most of this work is from other projects and people, and wouldn't be possible without them. Thanks to among others the stopwords-iso project and the more-stoplist project. And thanks for all your code input: @arthurdenner, @micalevisk, @fabric-io-rodrigues, @behzadmoradi, @guysaar223, @ConnorKrammer, @GreXLin85, @nanopx, @virtual and @JustroX!