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The TextChef processes plain text files and returns structured Document objects for further processing.

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Installation

TextChef is included in the base installation of Chonkie. No additional dependencies are required.
For installation instructions, see the Installation Guide.

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Initialization

from chonkie import TextChef

# Simple initialization - no parameters required
chef = TextChef()

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Methods

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process()

Process a text file and return a Document object.

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Parameters

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path
Union[str, Path]
required
Path to the text file (string or Path object)

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Returns

Document object containing the file content

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process_batch()

Process multiple text files at once.

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Parameters

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paths
List[Union[str, Path]]
required
List of file paths to process

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Returns

List[Document] where each Document contains a file’s contents.

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Usage

from chonkie import TextChef

# Initialize the chef
chef = TextChef()

# Process a text file
doc = chef.process("example.txt")

# Access the content
print(doc.content)
print(f"Document ID: {doc.id}")

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Integration with Chunkers

TextChef is designed to work seamlessly with Chonkie’s chunkers: 
from chonkie import TextChef, TokenChunker

# Step 1: Load text file
chef = TextChef()
doc = chef.process("article.txt")

# Step 2: Chunk the content
chunker = TokenChunker(chunk_size=512, chunk_overlap=50)
chunks = chunker.chunk(doc.content)

# Step 3: Store chunks back in the document
doc.chunks = chunks

# Now your document has both content and chunks
print(f"Document {doc.id}:")
print(f"  Content: {len(doc.content)} characters")
print(f"  Chunks: {len(doc.chunks)}")

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Encoding

TextChef reads files with UTF-8 encoding by default, ensuring proper handling of:
  • Unicode characters
  • International text
  • Special symbols
  • Emoji and other non-ASCII characters
All text is read as strings and preserved exactly as it appears in the source file.
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