Redact text

Redact a single string

To redact sensitive information from a text string, pass the string to the redact method.

Similar to other SDK functions that modify data, redact allows you to configure how to treat different entity types.

To learn more about the common parameters:

• generator_default

• generator_config

• label_allow_lists

• label_block_lists

go to Choosing tokenization or synthesis.

from tonic_textual.redact_api import TextualNer

textual = TextualNer()

raw_redaction = textual.redact("My name is John, and today I am demoing Textual, a software product created by Tonic")
print(raw_redaction.describe())

This produces the following output:

My name is [NAME_GIVEN_HI1h7], and [DATE_TIME_4hKfrH] I am demoing Textual, a software product created by [ORGANIZATION_P5XLAH]
{
    "start": 11,
    "end": 15,
    "new_start": 11,
    "new_end": 29,
    "label": "NAME_GIVEN",
    "text": "John",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[NAME_GIVEN_HI1h7]"
}
{
    "start": 21,
    "end": 26,
    "new_start": 35,
    "new_end": 53,
    "label": "DATE_TIME",
    "text": "today",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[DATE_TIME_4hKfrH]"
}
{
    "start": 79,
    "end": 84,
    "new_start": 106,
    "new_end": 127,
    "label": "ORGANIZATION",
    "text": "Tonic",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[ORGANIZATION_P5XLAH]"
}

You can also record redact calls, so that you can view and analyze results in the Textual application. To learn more, go to Recording API requests

Bulk redact raw text

In the same way that you use the redact method to redact strings, you can use the redact_bulk method to redact many strings at the same time.

Each string is redacted individually. Each string is fed into our model independently and cannot affect other strings.

To redact sensitive information from a list of text strings, pass the list to the redact_bulk method:

from tonic_textual.redact_api import TextualNer

textual = TextualNer()

raw_redaction = textual.redact_bulk(["Tonic was founded in 2018", "John Smith is a person"])
print(raw_redaction.describe())

This produces the following output:

[ORGANIZATION_5Ve7OH] was founded in [DATE_TIME_DnuC1]
{
    "start": 0,
    "end": 5,
    "new_start": 0,
    "new_end": 21,
    "label": "ORGANIZATION",
    "text": "Tonic",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[ORGANIZATION_5Ve7OH]"
}
{
    "start": 21,
    "end": 25,
    "new_start": 37,
    "new_end": 54,
    "label": "DATE_TIME",
    "text": "2018",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[DATE_TIME_DnuC1]"
}
[NAME_GIVEN_dySb5] [NAME_FAMILY_7w4Db3] is a person
{
    "start": 0,
    "end": 4,
    "new_start": 0,
    "new_end": 18,
    "label": "NAME_GIVEN",
    "text": "John",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[NAME_GIVEN_dySb5]"
}
{
    "start": 5,
    "end": 10,
    "new_start": 19,
    "new_end": 39,
    "label": "NAME_FAMILY",
    "text": "Smith",
    "score": 0.9,
    "language": "en",
    "new_text": "[NAME_FAMILY_7w4Db3]"
}

Recording API requests

When you use the redact method to redact text, you can optionally record these requests to view and analyze later in the Textual application.

The redact method takes an optional record_options (RecordApiRequestOptions) argument.

To record an API request:

from tonic_textual.redact_api import TextualNer
from tonic_textual.classes.record_api_request_options import RecordApiRequestOptions

ner = TextualNer()

ner.redact("My name is John Doe", record_options=RecordApiRequestOptions(
    record=True,
    retention_time_in_hours=1,
    tags=["my_first_request"])
)

The above code runs the redaction in the same way as any other redaction request, and then records the API request and its results.

The request itself is automatically purged after 1 hour.

You can view the results from the API Explorer page in Textual. The retention time for the results specified in hours and can be set to a value between 1 and 720.

Replacing values in your redaction response

Tonic Textual includes additional utilities to customize responses. The ReplaceTextHelper can take a redaction response from our redact call and modify the replacement values.

For example, the below example modifies the replacement values for first names and cities. It replaces them with strings of equal length that consist of ‘x’.

from tonic_textual.redact_api import TextualNer, Replacement
from tonic_textual.helpers.replace_text_helper import ReplaceTextHelper
from typing import Callable, Dict

ner = TextualNer()
response = ner.redact("My name is Adam Kamor. I live in Atlanta, GA.")

replace_funcs: Dict[str, Callable[[Replacement], str]] = {
    'NAME_GIVEN': lambda replacement: 'x'*len(replacement.text),
    'LOCATION_CITY': lambda replacement: 'x'*len(replacement.new_text)
}

replacement_helper = ReplaceTextHelper()
replaced_text = replacement_helper.replace(response, replace_funcs)