README.md

Project overview

This repository contains resources for training machine learning classifiers to predict the subreddit from which an arbitrary comment most likely originated.

Conda environment

Use of this repository requires a conda environment. To create one and install the project's package into it:

$ bash ./create_env.sh

NOTE: create_env.sh can be run from anywhere, and will always install the prefixed environment ./env into the repository root.

Data collection

To scrape new data, first ensure that a file enumerating your Reddit OAuth credentials exists at ./sub_clf/meta/credentials.json. The file must define the following fields:

{
    "client_id": "...",
    "client_secret": "...",
    "user_agent": "..."
}

NOTE: See the PRAW documentation for instructions on how to complete these fields.

Once your credentials.json is in place, to scrape new data from scratch using default parameters:

$ conda activate ./env
$ scrape

To see argumements useful for customing your data collection away from the default parameters:

$ scrape --help

NOTE: The scraped comments set will not be identical to the original data set. This is because new "top" and "hot" posts are always being added, while the number you can scrape from each category is capped at 1000. Regardless, the characteristics of all newly scraped comments should approximate the original data set, given the sheer volume of comments scrape will retrieve.

Data preprocessing

To preprocess your scraped data in preparation for feature extraction, first create a .yaml configuration file. Use the following example as a template:

./sub_clf/configs/configs/config_template_PREPROCESS.yaml

Once created, run the preprocess command and pass the path to your configuration file:

$ preprocess <path/to/config>

With many millions of records, preprocessing can incur extremely long runtimes. Should a job fail prematurely, you can effectively restart the preprocessing from where the job failed by adding the following field to your configuration file:

resume: true

Then rerun the above command.

Feature extraction

To extract features from preprocessed data prior to training a model, first create a .yaml configuration file. Use the following example as a template:

./sub_clf/configs/configs/config_template_EXTRACT.yaml

Once created, run the extract command and pass the path to your configuration file:

$ extract <path/to/config>

Model building

Currently under development...