conferences-llm-crawler/README.md

# Past Conferences Crawler (with LLM)

A Python script that crawls conferences from <https://www.dm.unipi.it/research/past-conferences/> and processes them using a local-run LLM (we used [Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2](https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2)) to translate the natural language info to a more structured format (json).

## Installation

Download the LLM model to use, specifically we use [`Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2-GGUF`](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2-GGUF):

```bash
# download the model, ~4GB
$ wget https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2-GGUF/blob/main/mistral-7b-instruct-v0.2.Q4_K_M.gguf
```

Install python the requirements:

```bash
# if you want create a venv
$ python -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate

# enable gpu support for llama-cpp
$ export CMAKE_ARGS="-DLLAMA_BLAS=ON -DLLAMA_BLAS_VENDOR=OpenBLAS"

# install requirements
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
```

## Launch

The following command will crawl all the conferences from `https://www.dm.unipi.it/research/past-conferences/` (all pages) and save the results in `conferences.json` as a list of json objects, one per line.

```bash
$ python main.py
```

The output is a list of json objects, one per line. To display the results with `jq`:

```bash
$ jq -s '.' conferences.json
```

## Main idea / Explainaition

We need to parse strings like the following

```html
<p><a href="http://www.crm.sns.it/event/507/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer
noopener">Statistical and Computational Aspects of Dynamics<br></a>Organized by Buddhima
Kasun Fernando Akurugodage (Centro di ricerca matematica Ennio De Giorgi &#8211; SNS),
Paolo Giulietti, and Tanja Isabelle Schindler (Universität Wien, Austria). Centro De
Giorgi &#8211; SNS, Pisa. December 13 &#8211; 16, 2022.</p>

<p><a href="https://events.dm.unipi.it/event/126/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer
noopener">Weekend di lavoro su Calcolo delle Variazioni<br></a>Organized by Giuseppe
Buttazzo, Maria Stella Gelli, and Aldo Pratelli. Grand Hotel Tettuccio Montecatini.
November 25 &#8211; 27, 2022.</p>

<p><a href="https://events.dm.unipi.it/event/109/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer
noopener">Incontri di geometria algebrica ed aritmetica Milano – Pisa<br></a>Department
of Mathematics, Pisa. November 16 &#8211; 17, 2022.</p>
```

We compose the following conversation with an LLM, things between `{{ ... }}` are templates that will be replaced before starting generating.

```
INPUT:
<p><a href="http://www.crm.sns.it/event/507/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer
noopener">Statistical and Computational Aspects of Dynamics<br></a>Organized by Buddhima
Kasun Fernando Akurugodage (Centro di ricerca matematica Ennio De Giorgi &#8211; SNS),
Paolo Giulietti, and Tanja Isabelle Schindler (Universität Wien, Austria). Centro De
Giorgi &#8211; SNS, Pisa. December 13 &#8211; 16, 2022.</p>

OUTPUT JSON:
{ 
    "title": "Statistical and Computational Aspects of Dynamics",
    "url": "http://www.crm.sns.it/event/507/",
    "description": "Organized by Buddhima Kasun Fernando Akurugodage (Centro di ricerca
        matematica Ennio De Giorgi – SNS), Paolo Giulietti, and Tanja Isabelle
        Schindler (Universität Wien, Austria). Location: Centro De Giorgi - SNS, Pisa.",
    "startDate": "2022-12-13",
    "endDate": "2022-12-16"
}

INPUT:
{{ conference_html }}

OUTPUT JSON:
```

And the LLM will complete this conversation with a json representation of the `{{ conference_html }}`. The first example is needed to show the model how to convert information from the input html data.