Getting started

This documentation provides information about the available functions for the Textual Python SDK, which allows you to interact with the Textual API.

You can use the Textual SDK to manage datasets, redact sensitive values from text strings and files, and generate LLM-ready output.

The quickstart provides information on how to install the SDK and set up an API key for authentication.

Install the Tonic Textual SDK

Before you get started, you must install the Textual Python SDK:

pip install tonic-textual

Set up a Textual API key

To authenticate with Tonic Textual, you must set up an API key. After you create your account, to obtain an API key, go to the User API Keys section of the User Profile page.

After you obtain the key, you can optionally set it as an environment variable:

export TONIC_TEXTUAL_API_KEY="<API-KEY>"

You can can also pass the API key as a parameter when you create your Textual client.

Creating a Textual client

To redact text or files, use the TextualNer client. To parse files, which is useful for extracting information from files such as PDF and DOCX, use the TextualParse client.

from tonic_textual.redact_api import TextualNer
from tonic_textual.parse_api import TextualParse

textual = TextualNer()
textual = TextualParse()

Both clients support the following optional arguments:

  • base_url - The URL of the server that hosts Tonic Textual. Default: https://textual.tonic.ai

  • api_key - Your API key. If not specified, you must set TONIC_TEXTUAL_API_KEY in your environment.

  • verify - Whether to verify SSL certification. Default: true