structured_outputs.md

# Structured Outputs

vLLM supports the generation of structured outputs using
[xgrammar](https://github.com/mlc-ai/xgrammar) or
[guidance](https://github.com/guidance-ai/llguidance) as backends.
This document shows you some examples of the different options that are
available to generate structured outputs.

## Online Serving (OpenAI API)

You can generate structured outputs using the OpenAI's [Completions](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/completions) and [Chat](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat) API.

The following parameters are supported, which must be added as extra parameters:

- `guided_choice`: the output will be exactly one of the choices.
- `guided_regex`: the output will follow the regex pattern.
- `guided_json`: the output will follow the JSON schema.
- `guided_grammar`: the output will follow the context free grammar.
- `structural_tag`: Follow a JSON schema within a set of specified tags within the generated text.

You can see the complete list of supported parameters on the [OpenAI-Compatible Server](../serving/openai_compatible_server.md) page.

Structured outputs are supported by default in the OpenAI-Compatible Server. You
may choose to specify the backend to use by setting the
`--guided-decoding-backend` flag to `vllm serve`. The default backend is `auto`,
which will try to choose an appropriate backend based on the details of the
request. You may also choose a specific backend, along with
some options. A full set of options is available in the `vllm serve --help`
text.

Now let´s see an example for each of the cases, starting with the `guided_choice`, as it´s the easiest one:

??? code

    ```python
    from openai import OpenAI
    client = OpenAI(
        base_url="http://localhost:8000/v1",
        api_key="-",
    )
    model = client.models.list().data[0].id

    completion = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {"role": "user", "content": "Classify this sentiment: vLLM is wonderful!"}
        ],
        extra_body={"guided_choice": ["positive", "negative"]},
    )
    print(completion.choices[0].message.content)
    ```

The next example shows how to use the `guided_regex`. The idea is to generate an email address, given a simple regex template:

??? code

    ```python
    completion = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": "Generate an example email address for Alan Turing, who works in Enigma. End in .com and new line. Example result: alan.turing@enigma.com\n",
            }
        ],
        extra_body={"guided_regex": r"\w+@\w+\.com\n", "stop": ["\n"]},
    )
    print(completion.choices[0].message.content)
    ```

One of the most relevant features in structured text generation is the option to generate a valid JSON with pre-defined fields and formats.
For this we can use the `guided_json` parameter in two different ways:

- Using directly a [JSON Schema](https://json-schema.org/)
- Defining a [Pydantic model](https://docs.pydantic.dev/latest/) and then extracting the JSON Schema from it (which is normally an easier option).

The next example shows how to use the `guided_json` parameter with a Pydantic model:

??? code

    ```python
    from pydantic import BaseModel
    from enum import Enum

    class CarType(str, Enum):
        sedan = "sedan"
        suv = "SUV"
        truck = "Truck"
        coupe = "Coupe"

    class CarDescription(BaseModel):
        brand: str
        model: str
        car_type: CarType

    json_schema = CarDescription.model_json_schema()

    completion = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": "Generate a JSON with the brand, model and car_type of the most iconic car from the 90's",
            }
        ],
        response_format={
            "type": "json_schema",
            "json_schema": {
                "name": "car-description",
                "schema": CarDescription.model_json_schema()
            },
        },
    )
    print(completion.choices[0].message.content)
    ```

!!! tip
    While not strictly necessary, normally it´s better to indicate in the prompt the
    JSON schema and how the fields should be populated. This can improve the
    results notably in most cases.

Finally we have the `guided_grammar` option, which is probably the most
difficult to use, but it´s really powerful. It allows us to define complete
languages like SQL queries. It works by using a context free EBNF grammar.
As an example, we can use to define a specific format of simplified SQL queries:

??? code

    ```python
    simplified_sql_grammar = """
        root ::= select_statement

        select_statement ::= "SELECT " column " from " table " where " condition

        column ::= "col_1 " | "col_2 "

        table ::= "table_1 " | "table_2 "

        condition ::= column "= " number

        number ::= "1 " | "2 "
    """

    completion = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": "Generate an SQL query to show the 'username' and 'email' from the 'users' table.",
            }
        ],
        extra_body={"guided_grammar": simplified_sql_grammar},
    )
    print(completion.choices[0].message.content)
    ```

See also: [full example](../examples/online_serving/structured_outputs.md)

## Reasoning Outputs

You can also use structured outputs with <project:#reasoning-outputs> for reasoning models.

```bash
vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B --reasoning-parser deepseek_r1
```

Note that you can use reasoning with any provided structured outputs feature. The following uses one with JSON schema:

??? code

    ```python
    from pydantic import BaseModel


    class People(BaseModel):
        name: str
        age: int


    completion = client.chat.completions.create(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": "Generate a JSON with the name and age of one random person.",
            }
        ],
        response_format={
            "type": "json_schema",
            "json_schema": {
                "name": "people",
                "schema": People.model_json_schema()
            }
        },
    )
    print("reasoning_content: ", completion.choices[0].message.reasoning_content)
    print("content: ", completion.choices[0].message.content)
    ```

See also: [full example](../examples/online_serving/structured_outputs.md)

## Experimental Automatic Parsing (OpenAI API)

This section covers the OpenAI beta wrapper over the `client.chat.completions.create()` method that provides richer integrations with Python specific types.

At the time of writing (`openai==1.54.4`), this is a "beta" feature in the OpenAI client library. Code reference can be found [here](https://github.com/openai/openai-python/blob/52357cff50bee57ef442e94d78a0de38b4173fc2/src/openai/resources/beta/chat/completions.py#L100-L104).

For the following examples, vLLM was setup using `vllm serve meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct`

Here is a simple example demonstrating how to get structured output using Pydantic models:

??? code

    ```python
    from pydantic import BaseModel
    from openai import OpenAI

    class Info(BaseModel):
        name: str
        age: int

    client = OpenAI(base_url="http://0.0.0.0:8000/v1", api_key="dummy")
    model = client.models.list().data[0].id
    completion = client.beta.chat.completions.parse(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
            {"role": "user", "content": "My name is Cameron, I'm 28. What's my name and age?"},
        ],
        response_format=Info,
    )

    message = completion.choices[0].message
    print(message)
    assert message.parsed
    print("Name:", message.parsed.name)
    print("Age:", message.parsed.age)
    ```

```console
ParsedChatCompletionMessage[Testing](content='{"name": "Cameron", "age": 28}', refusal=None, role='assistant', audio=None, function_call=None, tool_calls=[], parsed=Testing(name='Cameron', age=28))
Name: Cameron
Age: 28
```

Here is a more complex example using nested Pydantic models to handle a step-by-step math solution:

??? code

    ```python
    from typing import List
    from pydantic import BaseModel
    from openai import OpenAI

    class Step(BaseModel):
        explanation: str
        output: str

    class MathResponse(BaseModel):
        steps: list[Step]
        final_answer: str

    completion = client.beta.chat.completions.parse(
        model=model,
        messages=[
            {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful expert math tutor."},
            {"role": "user", "content": "Solve 8x + 31 = 2."},
        ],
        response_format=MathResponse,
    )

    message = completion.choices[0].message
    print(message)
    assert message.parsed
    for i, step in enumerate(message.parsed.steps):
        print(f"Step #{i}:", step)
    print("Answer:", message.parsed.final_answer)
    ```

Output:

```console
ParsedChatCompletionMessage[MathResponse](content='{ "steps": [{ "explanation": "First, let\'s isolate the term with the variable \'x\'. To do this, we\'ll subtract 31 from both sides of the equation.", "output": "8x + 31 - 31 = 2 - 31"}, { "explanation": "By subtracting 31 from both sides, we simplify the equation to 8x = -29.", "output": "8x = -29"}, { "explanation": "Next, let\'s isolate \'x\' by dividing both sides of the equation by 8.", "output": "8x / 8 = -29 / 8"}], "final_answer": "x = -29/8" }', refusal=None, role='assistant', audio=None, function_call=None, tool_calls=[], parsed=MathResponse(steps=[Step(explanation="First, let's isolate the term with the variable 'x'. To do this, we'll subtract 31 from both sides of the equation.", output='8x + 31 - 31 = 2 - 31'), Step(explanation='By subtracting 31 from both sides, we simplify the equation to 8x = -29.', output='8x = -29'), Step(explanation="Next, let's isolate 'x' by dividing both sides of the equation by 8.", output='8x / 8 = -29 / 8')], final_answer='x = -29/8'))
Step #0: explanation="First, let's isolate the term with the variable 'x'. To do this, we'll subtract 31 from both sides of the equation." output='8x + 31 - 31 = 2 - 31'
Step #1: explanation='By subtracting 31 from both sides, we simplify the equation to 8x = -29.' output='8x = -29'
Step #2: explanation="Next, let's isolate 'x' by dividing both sides of the equation by 8." output='8x / 8 = -29 / 8'
Answer: x = -29/8
```

An example of using `structural_tag` can be found here: <gh-file:examples/online_serving/structured_outputs>

## Offline Inference

Offline inference allows for the same types of structured outputs.
To use it, we´ll need to configure the guided decoding using the class `GuidedDecodingParams` inside `SamplingParams`.
The main available options inside `GuidedDecodingParams` are:

- `json`
- `regex`
- `choice`
- `grammar`
- `structural_tag`

These parameters can be used in the same way as the parameters from the Online
Serving examples above. One example for the usage of the `choice` parameter is
shown below:

??? code

    ```python
    from vllm import LLM, SamplingParams
    from vllm.sampling_params import GuidedDecodingParams

    llm = LLM(model="HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM2-1.7B-Instruct")

    guided_decoding_params = GuidedDecodingParams(choice=["Positive", "Negative"])
    sampling_params = SamplingParams(guided_decoding=guided_decoding_params)
    outputs = llm.generate(
        prompts="Classify this sentiment: vLLM is wonderful!",
        sampling_params=sampling_params,
    )
    print(outputs[0].outputs[0].text)
    ```

See also: [full example](../examples/online_serving/structured_outputs.md)