semantica/docs/reference/utils.md

title, description, icon

title	description	icon
Utils Module	Shared utilities for logging, validation, error handling, progress tracking, and common operations.	wrench

semantica.utils provides shared infrastructure used throughout Semantica. Most users won't call it directly, but its APIs are available when you need fine-grained control over logging, validation, progress tracking, or error handling.

What You Get

Structured logging with `@log_performance` decorator and quality metrics via environment variables. `validate_entity` and `validate_config` with a typed `ValidationError` carrying field and value context. `track_progress` wraps any iterable — auto-detects console vs Jupyter for the right renderer. `clean_text`, `hash_data`, `safe_filename`, and nested dict utilities used throughout the framework. `SemanticaError` → `ValidationError`, `ProcessingError` — typed exceptions for targeted recovery. `read_json_file` with `ProcessingError` on failure — no boilerplate try/except around JSON I/O.

Logging

```python from semantica.utils import setup_logging, get_logger

setup_logging(level="INFO")   # "DEBUG" | "INFO" | "WARNING" | "ERROR"
logger = get_logger(__name__)
```

```python from semantica.utils import log_performance, log_execution_time

@log_performance
def process_data(data):
    logger.info(f"Processing {len(data)} items")
    # Logs function name, duration, and any exception automatically

@log_execution_time
def expensive_step(data):
    ...
# Logs: "expensive_step completed in 2.34s"
```

```bash export SEMANTICA_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG export SEMANTICA_LOG_FORMAT=json # "json" | "text" export SEMANTICA_PROGRESS_BAR=true ```

Validation

from semantica.utils import validate_entity, validate_config, ValidationError

# Validate an entity dict
try:
    validate_entity({"id": "1", "type": "PERSON", "text": "Alice"})
except ValidationError as e:
    print(f"Invalid entity: {e.message}")
    print(f"  Field:   {e.field}")
    print(f"  Value:   {e.value}")

# Validate a configuration dict
try:
    validate_config(config)
except ValidationError as e:
    print(f"Invalid config: {e}")

Function	Description
validate_entity(data)	Check entity dict has required fields and correct types
validate_config(cfg)	Check configuration dict against schema

Progress Tracking

from semantica.utils import track_progress

# Wraps any iterable — auto-detects console vs Jupyter
for item in track_progress(items, desc="Processing documents"):
    process(item)

Supports:

• Console — tqdm progress bar with ETA
• Jupyter — notebook-compatible widget (auto-detected)
• File — write progress to a log file

Helper Functions

from semantica.utils import clean_text, hash_data, safe_filename

# Normalize whitespace and strip control characters
clean = clean_text("  Hello   World  ")     # → "Hello World"

# Deterministic SHA-256 hash of any JSON-serializable object
uid   = hash_data({"key": "value"})         # → hex digest string

# Sanitize a string for use as a filename
fname = safe_filename("My File?.txt")       # → "My_File_.txt"

Nested Dict Utilities

Helper functions for deep configuration access — used extensively inside Config and ConfigManager:

from semantica.utils import get_nested_value, set_nested_value, merge_dicts

config = {
    "processing": {"batch_size": 32, "max_workers": 4},
    "llm":        {"provider": "groq", "model": "llama-3.3-70b-versatile"},
}

# Dot-notation read — returns default if key path is absent
batch = get_nested_value(config, "processing.batch_size", default=16)
# → 32

# Dot-notation write
set_nested_value(config, "processing.batch_size", 64)

# Deep merge — nested keys are merged recursively
base      = {"a": {"x": 1, "y": 2}, "b": 3}
overrides = {"a": {"y": 99, "z": 4}, "c": 5}
merged    = merge_dicts(base, overrides, deep=True)
# → {"a": {"x": 1, "y": 99, "z": 4}, "b": 3, "c": 5}

Exception Hierarchy

from semantica.utils import SemanticaError, ValidationError, ProcessingError

try:
    run_pipeline(data)
except ValidationError as e:
    # Input data did not pass schema validation
    logger.error(f"Validation failed at field '{e.field}': {e.message}")
except ProcessingError as e:
    # Failure during extraction or graph construction
    logger.error(f"Processing failed at step {e.step}: {e}")
except SemanticaError as e:
    # Catch-all for all Semantica framework errors
    logger.error(f"Framework error: {e}")

Exception	When Raised
SemanticaError	Base class — all framework errors inherit from this
ValidationError	Input data failed schema or type validation
ProcessingError	Failure during extraction, graph build, or pipeline step

File Utilities

from semantica.utils import read_json_file

# Read and parse a JSON file — raises ProcessingError on failure
config = read_json_file("config.json")

Tips and Common Pitfalls

**Call `setup_logging(level="INFO")` once at application startup.** Without it, Semantica falls back to Python's root logger, which may be silent or misconfigured. Call it before importing other Semantica modules to capture initialization messages. **Use `@log_performance` on expensive functions.** The decorator logs function name, duration, and any raised exception automatically — no manual `time.time()` bookkeeping needed. Essential for profiling multi-step pipelines where one step is a hidden bottleneck. **`hash_data()` is deterministic across runs.** Given the same input dict (any JSON-serializable object), `hash_data()` always returns the same SHA-256 hex string — suitable as a cache key or idempotency token in pipeline steps. **Catch `SemanticaError` as the broadest exception net.** All framework errors inherit from `SemanticaError`, so `except SemanticaError` catches validation failures, processing errors, and everything in between. Use specific subclasses for targeted recovery logic. **`track_progress` auto-detects Jupyter.** In a terminal it renders a tqdm progress bar; in a Jupyter notebook it renders an interactive widget. You don't need to check the environment — the same call works in both. Framework orchestration that uses Utils internally. Uses ProgressTracker for per-step tracking.