Masking and unmasking a string in Python

Question

I have Python code to generate SQL queries from English queries. But while predicting, I might have to send sensitive data in my English query to the model. I want to mask sensitive information like nouns and numbers in my English query. When I receive the predicted query, I want to unmask that data again.

In short, I need a python program that can mask nouns and numbers in my string and then unmask them whenever I want them to. We can replace it with anything you suggest.

Sample English Query:

How many Chocolate Orders for a customer with ID 123456?

Masking Expected Output:

How many xxxxxxxxxx Orders for a customer with ID xxxxxxxxx?

My algorithm with create the query like:

Select count(1) from `sample-bucket` as d where d.Type ='xxxxxxxx' and d.CustId = 'xxxxxxx'

Now I need the unmasked query like below:

Select count(1) from `sample-bucket` as d where d.Type ='Chocolate' and d.CustId = '123456'

Are you looking for a way to mask string literals only? You should also include what the expected output looks like after masking. — Tim Biegeleisen, Jun 13 '23 at 09:20
@TimBiegeleisen I have updated the expected output as well. Please have a look. — Aadhi Verma, Jun 13 '23 at 09:49
Use: `re.sub(r"'.*?'", "'xxx'", query)` to mask all string literals. — Tim Biegeleisen, Jun 13 '23 at 10:01
You don't. Once you have replaced the string literals, the original values are gone — Tim Biegeleisen, Jun 13 '23 at 10:49
This looks like an XY problem, while also being way too broad of a question. Please try to make your question more specific. Spend some time researching how similar tasks were solved by others. Then,try to implement this yourself as far as you can, and if you hit a roadblock you can ask a specific question about that — derpda, Jun 19 '23 at 06:13

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '23 at 12:39

You can use below code for the masking and unmasking a string. This way you can retain the words in the dictionary and can use them later on when you want to unmask the string. I think this code can be very helpful for the people using third party tools.

import base64 
import nltk

nltk.download('averaged_perceptron_tagger')

def base_64_encoding(text):
    return str(base64.b64encode(text.encode("utf-8")).decode("utf-8"))

def base_64_decoding(text):
    return str(base64.b64decode(text.encode('utf-8')).decode('utf-8'))

masked_element = {}
english_query = "How many Chocolate Orders for a customer with ID 123456?"
print("English Query: ", english_query)
for word in english_query.split(" "):
    ans = nltk.pos_tag([word])
    val = ans[0][1]
    if val == 'NN' or val == 'NNS' or val == 'NNPS' or val == 'NNP':
        masked_element[word] = base_64_encoding(word)
        english_query = english_query.replace(word, base_64_encoding(word))
    if word.isdigit():
        masked_element[word] = base_64_encoding(word)
        english_query = english_query.replace(word, base_64_encoding(word))
print("Masked Query: ", english_query)

for key, val in masked_element.items():
    if val in english_query:
        english_query = english_query.replace(val, key)
print("Unmasked English Query: ", english_query)

Below is the output of above program:

Masking and unmasking a string in Python

1 Answers1