Cicero On-Demand API

The Cicero On-Demand provides a RESTful interface that wraps LCC's CiceroLite and other NLP components. This API is used for Cicero On-Demand whether the server is the one hosted at LCC or is run locally on your machine. You can access a free, rate-limited version online, as described below, at demo.languagecomputer.com. For more information on service plans, contact support.

Following is a description of the REST calls, which are valid for both the hosted and local modes.

Checking the server status

You can verify the server is running via the built-in HTML viewer. Assuming your browser is running on the same machine as the server just enter the following URL into its address bar:

http://demo.languagecomputer.com/cicerolite
or
http://localhost:8765/form.htm

Accessing the server using a web browser

You can access the server directly using a web browser.

http://demo.languagecomputer.com/entity/extended/?url=http://www.cnn.com&output_format=JSON
or
http://localhost:8765/entity/extended/?url=http://www.cnn.com/&output_format=JSON

Accessing the server using Curl.

Curl is a command line utility that lets you access web services.

To process a local file using Curl

curl -sLN --compressed -F 'content=@myLocalFile.txt' --url 'http://demo.languagecomputer.com/entity/extended'
or
curl -sLN --compressed -F 'content=@myLocalFile.txt' --url 'http://localhost:8765/entity/extended'

To process raw text using Curl

curl -sLN --compressed -F 'content=John Smith works for us.' --url 'http://demo.languagecomputer.com/entity/extended/'
or
curl -sLN --compressed -F 'content=John Smith works for us.' --url 'http://localhost:8765/entity/extended/'

Specifying an output format

The system offers a variety of different output formats, which can be specified by a parameter as shown below.

http://demo.languagecomputer.com/entity/extended/?url=http://www.cnn.com/&output_format=PUBLIC_ENTITY_XML
or
http://localhost:8765/entity/extended/?url=http://www.cnn.com/&output_format=PUBLIC_ENTITY_XML

Supported Output formats

  • JSON: Outputs the document in a JSON format.
  • LCC_RDF: Outputs the document in RDF XML.
  • WEB: This is the user-friendly HTML viewer.
  • PUBLIC_ENTITY_XML: The Public entity XML format is easy for scanning over documents.

Getting Started With My Copy

Unzip the server software to an installation directory of your choice. Change into the created sub-directory and start the REST server with the following command.

Change the above URLS from demo.languagecomputer.com to localhost:8765

on Windows:

ciceroserver.bat

or on Linux:

ciceroserver.sh