Presidio CLI

Presidio CLI

CLI tool that analyzes text for PII Entities using Presidio Analyzer.

Prerequisites

Python version: 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13

poetry tool installed:

# check if app is installed
poetry --version

# install, if not available
pip install poetry

Install presidio-cli in a virtual env

Install from Python Package Index

install in current python env

python -m pip install presidio-cli

install required apps and presidio-cli in virtual environment

poetry add presidio-cli

Install from source

# clone from git
git clone https://github.com/data-privacy-stack/presidio
cd presidio/presidio-cli
# install required apps and presidio-cli
poetry install

Install language models for spaCy

Load models for the English (en) language using the command presented below. For further information please visit section models.

python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg

Configuration file syntax

The default configuration is taken from the .presidiocli file in a current directory.

Configuration file supports the following parameters in a yaml file:

• language - the expected language for PII detection. Default is en. For supporting additional languages, see this documentation

• entities - list of entities to recognize. Maps to the entities field in presidio-analyzer. If empty, returns all supported entities for this input language.

• ignore - list of ignored files/folders/directories based on pattern. It is recommended to ignore Version Control files, for example .git

• allow - list of tokens that should not be marked as PII.

• threshold - only show problems/findings whose scores are at or above this threshold. Must be a number between 0 and 1.

Note: a file requires at least one parameter to be set.

An example of yaml configuration file content:

---
language: en
ignore: |
  .git
  *.cfg
entities:
  - PERSON
  - CREDIT_CARD
  - EMAIL_ADDRESS
allow:
  - "allowed token 1"
  - "allowed token 2"
threshold: 0.8

Run the Presidio CLI

Run the Presidio CLI to execute Presidio Analyzer with specified configuration: language, threshold, entities and ignore pre-configured files/paths.

Configuration from a file

An example of running script with configuration from a file.

There are two example .yaml configuration files in the conf directory:

• default.yaml - ignore the .git directory
• limited.yaml - limit list of entities used to only 3 of them, ignore .git directory and .cfg files.

# run with default configuration (file `.presidiocli`) in the current directory
presidio .

# run with configuration limited.yaml in the "tests" directory
presidio -c presidio_cli/conf/limited.yaml tests/

# run with configuration limited.yaml in single file only tests/test_analyzer.py
presidio -c presidio_cli/conf/limited.yaml tests/test_analyzer.py

Threshold override

Use --threshold to override the loaded config for a single run:

presidio --threshold 0.7 tests/

The CLI keeps the existing selection order: --config-data, --config-file, .presidiocli, then the default config. The command-line flag only changes the in-memory threshold after that config is loaded.

Configuration as a parameter

An example of using configuration as data in parameter:

# ignore paths .git and *.cfg
presidio -d "ignore: |
  .git
  *.cfg" tests/

# limit list of entities to CREDIT_CARD
presidio -d "entities:
  - CREDIT_CARD" tests/

# equivalent to use -c parameter
presidio -d "$(cat presidio_cli/conf/limited.yaml)" tests/

Formatting output

Output can be formatted using -f or --format parameter. The default format is auto.

Available formats:

• standard - standard output format

presidio -d "entities:
  - PERSON" -f standard tests/conftest.py
# result
tests/conftest.py
  34:58     0.85     PERSON
  37:33     0.85     PERSON

• github - GitHub Actions workflow commands that create a warning or error annotation for each finding

presidio -d "entities:
  - PERSON" -f github tests/conftest.py
# result
::group::tests/conftest.py
::warning file=tests/conftest.py,line=34,col=58::34:58 [PERSON] score=0.85
::warning file=tests/conftest.py,line=37,col=33::37:33 [PERSON] score=0.85
::endgroup::

• colored - standard output format but with colors: error scores are red, warning scores are yellow

• parsable - easy to parse automaticaly

presidio -d "entities:
  - PERSON" -f parsable tests/conftest.py
# result
{"entity_type": "PERSON", "start": 57, "end": 62, "score": 0.85, "analysis_explanation": null}
{"entity_type": "PERSON", "start": 32, "end": 37, "score": 0.85, "analysis_explanation": null}

• auto - default format, switches automatically between those 2 modes:
  • github, if run on github - environment variables GITHUB_ACTIONS and GITHUB_WORKFLOW are set
  • colored, otherwise

Warnings and errors

Each finding has a level based on its score:

• error - the score is 1.0
• warning - the score is below 1.0

Use --no-warnings to output only error-level findings:

presidio --no-warnings tests/

Exit codes

• 0 - no findings were output
• 1 - at least one finding was output, or the configuration is invalid
• 2 - invalid command-line arguments

Findings filtered out by threshold or --no-warnings do not affect the exit code. To report findings without failing a CI step, ignore the exit code:

presidio . || true

List of all parameters

Simply run the following to get a list of all available options for the CLI:

presidio --help