How to extract the decision rules from scikit-learn decision-tree?

Question

I believe that this answer is more correct than the other answers here:

from sklearn.tree import _tree

def tree_to_code(tree, feature_names):
    tree_ = tree.tree_
    feature_name = [
        feature_names[i] if i != _tree.TREE_UNDEFINED else "undefined!"
        for i in tree_.feature
    ]
    print "def tree({}):".format(", ".join(feature_names))

    def recurse(node, depth):
        indent = "  " * depth
        if tree_.feature[node] != _tree.TREE_UNDEFINED:
            name = feature_name[node]
            threshold = tree_.threshold[node]
            print "{}if {} <= {}:".format(indent, name, threshold)
            recurse(tree_.children_left[node], depth + 1)
            print "{}else:  # if {} > {}".format(indent, name, threshold)
            recurse(tree_.children_right[node], depth + 1)
        else:
            print "{}return {}".format(indent, tree_.value[node])

    recurse(0, 1)

This prints out a valid Python function. Here's an example output for a tree that is trying to return its input, a number between 0 and 10.

def tree(f0):
  if f0 <= 6.0:
    if f0 <= 1.5:
      return [[ 0.]]
    else:  # if f0 > 1.5
      if f0 <= 4.5:
        if f0 <= 3.5:
          return [[ 3.]]
        else:  # if f0 > 3.5
          return [[ 4.]]
      else:  # if f0 > 4.5
        return [[ 5.]]
  else:  # if f0 > 6.0
    if f0 <= 8.5:
      if f0 <= 7.5:
        return [[ 7.]]
      else:  # if f0 > 7.5
        return [[ 8.]]
    else:  # if f0 > 8.5
      return [[ 9.]]

Here are some stumbling blocks that I see in other answers:

1. Using tree_.threshold == -2 to decide whether a node is a leaf isn't a good idea. What if it's a real decision node with a threshold of -2? Instead, you should look at tree.feature or tree.children_*.
2. The line features = [feature_names[i] for i in tree_.feature] crashes with my version of sklearn, because some values of tree.tree_.feature are -2 (specifically for leaf nodes).
3. There is no need to have multiple if statements in the recursive function, just one is fine.

I created my own function to extract the rules from the decision trees created by sklearn:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier

# dummy data:
df = pd.DataFrame({'col1':[0,1,2,3],'col2':[3,4,5,6],'dv':[0,1,0,1]})

# create decision tree
dt = DecisionTreeClassifier(max_depth=5, min_samples_leaf=1)
dt.fit(df.ix[:,:2], df.dv)

This function first starts with the nodes (identified by -1 in the child arrays) and then recursively finds the parents. I call this a node's 'lineage'. Along the way, I grab the values I need to create if/then/else SAS logic:

def get_lineage(tree, feature_names):
     left      = tree.tree_.children_left
     right     = tree.tree_.children_right
     threshold = tree.tree_.threshold
     features  = [feature_names[i] for i in tree.tree_.feature]

     # get ids of child nodes
     idx = np.argwhere(left == -1)[:,0]     

     def recurse(left, right, child, lineage=None):          
          if lineage is None:
               lineage = [child]
          if child in left:
               parent = np.where(left == child)[0].item()
               split = 'l'
          else:
               parent = np.where(right == child)[0].item()
               split = 'r'

          lineage.append((parent, split, threshold[parent], features[parent]))

          if parent == 0:
               lineage.reverse()
               return lineage
          else:
               return recurse(left, right, parent, lineage)

     for child in idx:
          for node in recurse(left, right, child):
               print node

The sets of tuples below contain everything I need to create SAS if/then/else statements. I do not like using do blocks in SAS which is why I create logic describing a node's entire path. The single integer after the tuples is the ID of the terminal node in a path. All of the preceding tuples combine to create that node.

In [1]: get_lineage(dt, df.columns)
(0, 'l', 0.5, 'col1')
1
(0, 'r', 0.5, 'col1')
(2, 'l', 4.5, 'col2')
3
(0, 'r', 0.5, 'col1')
(2, 'r', 4.5, 'col2')
(4, 'l', 2.5, 'col1')
5
(0, 'r', 0.5, 'col1')
(2, 'r', 4.5, 'col2')
(4, 'r', 2.5, 'col1')
6

I modified the code submitted by Zelazny7 to print some pseudocode:

def get_code(tree, feature_names):
        left      = tree.tree_.children_left
        right     = tree.tree_.children_right
        threshold = tree.tree_.threshold
        features  = [feature_names[i] for i in tree.tree_.feature]
        value = tree.tree_.value

        def recurse(left, right, threshold, features, node):
                if (threshold[node] != -2):
                        print "if ( " + features[node] + " <= " + str(threshold[node]) + " ) {"
                        if left[node] != -1:
                                recurse (left, right, threshold, features,left[node])
                        print "} else {"
                        if right[node] != -1:
                                recurse (left, right, threshold, features,right[node])
                        print "}"
                else:
                        print "return " + str(value[node])

        recurse(left, right, threshold, features, 0)

if you call get_code(dt, df.columns) on the same example you will obtain:

if ( col1 <= 0.5 ) {
return [[ 1.  0.]]
} else {
if ( col2 <= 4.5 ) {
return [[ 0.  1.]]
} else {
if ( col1 <= 2.5 ) {
return [[ 1.  0.]]
} else {
return [[ 0.  1.]]
}
}
}

Scikit learn introduced a delicious new method called export_text in version 0.21 (May 2019) to extract the rules from a tree. Documentation here. It's no longer necessary to create a custom function.

Once you've fit your model, you just need two lines of code. First, import export_text:

from sklearn.tree import export_text

Second, create an object that will contain your rules. To make the rules look more readable, use the feature_names argument and pass a list of your feature names. For example, if your model is called model and your features are named in a dataframe called X_train, you could create an object called tree_rules:

tree_rules = export_text(model, feature_names=list(X_train.columns))

Then just print or save tree_rules. Your output will look like this:

|--- Age <= 0.63
|   |--- EstimatedSalary <= 0.61
|   |   |--- Age <= -0.16
|   |   |   |--- class: 0
|   |   |--- Age >  -0.16
|   |   |   |--- EstimatedSalary <= -0.06
|   |   |   |   |--- class: 0
|   |   |   |--- EstimatedSalary >  -0.06
|   |   |   |   |--- EstimatedSalary <= 0.40
|   |   |   |   |   |--- EstimatedSalary <= 0.03
|   |   |   |   |   |   |--- class: 1

There is a new DecisionTreeClassifier method, decision_path, in the 0.18.0 release. The developers provide an extensive (well-documented) walkthrough.

The first section of code in the walkthrough that prints the tree structure seems to be OK. However, I modified the code in the second section to interrogate one sample. My changes denoted with # <--

Edit The changes marked by # <-- in the code below have since been updated in walkthrough link after the errors were pointed out in pull requests #8653 and #10951. It's much easier to follow along now.

sample_id = 0
node_index = node_indicator.indices[node_indicator.indptr[sample_id]:
                                    node_indicator.indptr[sample_id + 1]]

print('Rules used to predict sample %s: ' % sample_id)
for node_id in node_index:

    if leave_id[sample_id] == node_id:  # <-- changed != to ==
        #continue # <-- comment out
        print("leaf node {} reached, no decision here".format(leave_id[sample_id])) # <--

    else: # < -- added else to iterate through decision nodes
        if (X_test[sample_id, feature[node_id]] <= threshold[node_id]):
            threshold_sign = "<="
        else:
            threshold_sign = ">"

        print("decision id node %s : (X[%s, %s] (= %s) %s %s)"
              % (node_id,
                 sample_id,
                 feature[node_id],
                 X_test[sample_id, feature[node_id]], # <-- changed i to sample_id
                 threshold_sign,
                 threshold[node_id]))

Rules used to predict sample 0: 
decision id node 0 : (X[0, 3] (= 2.4) > 0.800000011921)
decision id node 2 : (X[0, 2] (= 5.1) > 4.94999980927)
leaf node 4 reached, no decision here

Change the sample_id to see the decision paths for other samples. I haven't asked the developers about these changes, just seemed more intuitive when working through the example.

from StringIO import StringIO
out = StringIO()
out = tree.export_graphviz(clf, out_file=out)
print out.getvalue()

You can see a digraph Tree. Then, clf.tree_.feature and clf.tree_.value are array of nodes splitting feature and array of nodes values respectively. You can refer to more details from this github source.