Python Synonyms Crawler

A Python utility that fetches synonyms for a specified word.

Installation

$ pip install synonymscrawler

synonymscrawler has 3 dependencies:

• lxml
• requests
• blockspring

pip installs the latter two along with this package. To install the former on Windows:

• Install the appropriate .whl file from lxml.
• If you're lucky, then there will be two files: a zip folder and a .whl file. In that case, copy the .whl file to the Scripts directory in your Python installation folder, and invoke pip on it.
• If you're not so lucky, then there will only be a zip folder. If you're using a virtual environment (as you should be), then extract the zip folder, and copy the contents to virtual-environment-dir-name/Lib/site-packages.
• Confirm successful installation via pip list.

Modules

simple_synonyms_crawler

from synonymscrawler import simple_synonyms_crawler
simple_synonyms_crawler.crawl('adumbrate', 50)

Returns a list of up to N synonyms for a given word.
Here, we shall return up to 50 synonyms for "adumbrate."

synonyms_crawler

from synonymscrawler import synonyms_crawler
synonyms_crawler.crawl('adumbrate', 2)

Returns a dictionary object, where the keys are levels, and the values are the list of synonyms at each level.

For example, the output of this code block would be:

{
  0: ['adumbrate'], 

  1: ['suggest', 'cloud', 'portend', 'intimate', 
      'bode', 'augur', 'outline', 'foretell', 
      'darken', 'obscure', 'sketch', 'indicate', 
      'mist'], 

    2: ['main features', 'skeleton', 'rough draft', 
        'characterize', 'depiction', 'survey', 
        'haze', 'tone down', 'conformation', 
        'thumbnail sketch', 'aperçu', 'skeletonize', 
        'plot', 'figure', 'line', 'cloudover', 
        'configuration', 'rough out', 'digest', 
        'compendium', 'bare facts', ...]
}

In other words:

{
    level0: [starting word],
    level1: [immediate synonyms for starting word],
    level2: [synonyms for words in level1]
}

blockspring_synonyms_crawler

SynonymsCrawler API

To run, download the BlockSpring CLI, and follow the instructions here to test it locally.

The output should be similar to that of synonyms_crawler above, except for the fact that level 0's value will be the starting word alone, rather than a list with the starting word.

In other words:

{
       0: 'adumbrate',
       1: [adumbrate's synonyms],
       2: [synonyms of adumbrate's synonyms],
       .....
}

References

• Thesaurus.com - Source of Synonyms
• Tutorial on HTML Scraping in Python