PII Anonymization Service

This project is a simple Flask API that exposes an endpoint to anonymize text, with a particular focus on identifying and masking Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in Italian text using Microsoft Presidio.

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API Documentation 📖

This service exposes a single POST endpoint: /anonymize.

Request:

• Method: POST
• Path: /anonymize
• Headers: Content-Type: application/json
• Body:

  {
    "text": "String containing the text to be anonymized."
  }

Successful Response (200 OK):

• Headers: Content-Type: application/json
• Body:

  {
    "text": "String containing the anonymized text."
  }

Error Responses:

• 400 Bad Request: Invalid JSON or missing text field.
• 500 Internal Server Error: Internal processing error.

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Technology Stack 🛠️

• Python 3.8+
• Flask: Micro web framework for creating the API.
• Presidio Analyzer: For PII detection.
• Presidio Anonymizer: For PII anonymization/masking.
• spaCy: NLP library used by Presidio for entity recognition (specifically with the Italian model it_core_news_lg).

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Start Project Locally 🚀

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+ and pip
• git (for cloning)

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/<YOUR_GITHUB_USER>/<YOUR_REPO_NAME>.git
   cd <YOUR_REPO_NAME>

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv venv
   # On Windows:
   # venv\Scripts\activate
   # On macOS/Linux:
   source venv/bin/activate

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the Application

Start the Flask development server:

python3 app.py

The application will typically be available at http://127.0.0.1:3000/.

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Development 💻

Project Structure

• app.py: Flask application entry point, API endpoint definition.
• presidio_logic.py: Core Presidio setup, custom recognizers, and anonymization functions.
• requirements.txt: Python dependencies.
• venv/: Virtual environment directory (usually gitignored).
• README.md: This file.

Local Development Server

As described in "Run the Application" above:

python app.py

Python Version Management

It's recommended to use a virtual environment (venv) to manage Python versions and dependencies per project. Tools like pyenv can also be used for managing multiple Python installations.

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Testing 🧪

Unit Testing (Conceptual)

While this template doesn't include specific unit tests, you would typically use a framework like pytest or Python's built-in unittest module.

To run unit tests (example using pytest):

1. Install pytest: pip install pytest
2. Create test files (e.g., test_presidio_logic.py, test_app.py) in a tests/ directory.
3. Run tests:

   pytest

Manual API Testing

Use tools like curl, Postman, or Insomnia to send POST requests to the /anonymize endpoint.

Example using curl:

curl -X POST \
  http://127.0.0.1:3000/anonymize \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "text": "Il signor Mario Rossi vive in Via Roma 123. Contattare a [email protected]"
  }'