README.md

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🖥️🧠💪 Eloquent Attribute Value Prediction

❤️ Machine Learning For Laravel Developers! ❤️

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With this package you'll be able to predict attribute values for your Laravel Eloquent models using the power of machine learning! 🌟

With an intuitive syntax you can predict the values of both categorical (string) and continuous (numeric) attributes. Take a look at the examples below.

$animal = new \App\Models\Animal();
$animal->size = 'small';
$animal->has_wings = false;
$animal->domesticated = true;

$animal->name = $animal->predict('name');

// 'cat'

$predictions = $animal->getPredictions('name');

// [
//   'cat' => 0.43,
//   'dog' => 0.40,
//   'bird' => 0.10,
//   'elephant => 0.9,
// ]

$house = new \App\Models\House();
$house->num_bedrooms = 3;
$house->num_bathrooms = 1;

$house->value = $house->predict('value');

// 180000

Installation

To install just run the following Composer command.

composer require divineomega/eloquent-attribute-value-prediction

After installation, you need to set up your model for attribute prediction.

Setup

Let's say you have an IrisFlowers table that contains data about each of three species of the Iris flower. In this example, we want to be able to predict the flower's species given the sepal length and width, and petal length and width.

First, we need to set up out IrisFlower model for attribut prediction.

This is done by adding the HasPredictableAttributes interface and PredictsAttributes trait to our model as shown below.

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use DivineOmega\EloquentAttributeValuePrediction\Interfaces\HasPredictableAttributes;
use DivineOmega\EloquentAttributeValuePrediction\Traits\PredictsAttributes;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class IrisFlower extends Model implements HasPredictableAttributes
{
    use PredictsAttributes;

}

We then need to tell our model which attributes we wish to predict. We do this by adding the registerPredictableAttributes() function.

In this example, we want to use predict the species attribute based on the sepal_length, sepal_width, petal_length, and petal_width attributes. This can be done by returning an array in the following format.

public function registerPredictableAttributes(): array
    {
        return [
            'species' => [
                'sepal_length',
                'sepal_width',
                'petal_length',
                'petal_width',
            ],
        ];
    }

You also need to add the attributes you are using to the $casts array. It is important that the machine learning algorithm knows the type of data stored in each attribute, and that it is consistent.

For our IrisFlower example, the following format is appropriate.

protected $casts = [
        'sepal_length' => 'float',
        'sepal_width' => 'float',
        'petal_length' => 'float',
        'petal_width' => 'float',
        'species' => 'string',
    ];

Training

Before you can make attribute value predictions, you must train a machine learning model on your data. As a general rule, the more data you provide your model, the better it will perform, and the more accurate it will be.

You can train your model(s) using the eavp:train Artisan command, as shown in the example below.

php artisan eavp:train \\App\\Models\\IrisFlower

One model will be trained for each of the attributes you wish to predict. When they are trained, they will be saved into the storage/eavp/model/ directory for future use.

Be aware that the training process can take some time to complete depending on the amount of data you are using, and the complexity of your machine learning model. Training progress will be output to the console where possible.

You can re-run this command (manually, or on a schedule) to re-train your machine learning model(s). Previously trained models will be replaced automatically.

Prediction

Once you have set up your Eloquent model, and trained your machine learning model(s), you can begin predicting attributes.

For example, to predict the species of an Iris flower, you can create a new IrisFlower object and populate a few of its known attributes, then call the predict method.

$flower = new \App\Models\IrisFlower();
$flower->sepal_length = 5.1;
$flower->sepal_width = 3.5;
$flower->petal_length = 1.4;
$flower->petal_width = 0.2;

$species = $flower->predict('species');  

The predict method should be passed the attribute name you wish to predict. It will then returns the prediction as a string or numeric type.

In our example, this should be the 'setosa' species, based on Iris flower data set.

Advanced

Prediction confidence

If you wish, you can also retrieve the machine learning model's confidence that a prediction is correct. This is done with the getPredictions method.

$flower = new \App\Models\IrisFlower();
$flower->sepal_length = 4.5;
$flower->sepal_width = 2.3;
$flower->petal_length = 1.3;
$flower->petal_width = 0.3;

$predictions = $flower->getPredictions('species');

/*
array:3 [
  "setosa" => 0.69785665879791
  "versicolor" => 0.30214334120209
  "virginica" => 0.0
]
*/

In this example, you can see that the machine learning model is ~70% confident the flower is a Setosa, ~30 confident the flower is a Versicolor, and 0% confident the flower is a Virginica.

Note that you can only use the getPredictions method if the attribute you are attempting to predict the value of is non-numeric.

Changing attribute estimators

By default, attribute values are predicted using K-d Neighbors. This is a more efficient form of a standard K Nearest Neighbors algorithm.

The machine learning algorithm that is used to predict your attribute values is known as an 'estimator'. If you wish, you can modify the estimator which is used for each attribute.

To do this, you need to add a registerEstimators method to your model.

public function registerEstimators(): array
{
    return [
        'species' => new MultilayerPerceptron([
            new Dense(50),
            new Dense(50),
        ]),
    ];
}

In the example above, we are changing the estimator for the species attribute to a multilayer perceptron classifier (neural network) with two densely connected hidden layers.

Under the hood, this package uses the Rubix ML library. This means you can use any estimator is supports.

See the Choosing an Estimator page for a list of all available estimators you can use for attribute prediction.