Implement saving and loading of RetrievalQA chain (#5818)

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Fixes #3983
Mimicing what we do for saving and loading VectorDBQA chain, I added the
logic for RetrievalQA chain.
Also added a unit test. I did not find how we test other chains for
their saving and loading functionality, so I just added a file with one
test case. Let me know if there are recommended ways to test it.

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---------

Co-authored-by: Harrison Chase <hw.chase.17@gmail.com>

langchain/chains/loading.py

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ from langchain.chains.llm_requests import LLMRequestsChain
 from langchain.chains.pal.base import PALChain
 from langchain.chains.qa_with_sources.base import QAWithSourcesChain
 from langchain.chains.qa_with_sources.vector_db import VectorDBQAWithSourcesChain
-from langchain.chains.retrieval_qa.base import VectorDBQA
+from langchain.chains.retrieval_qa.base import RetrievalQA, VectorDBQA
 from langchain.chains.sql_database.base import SQLDatabaseChain
 from langchain.llms.loading import load_llm, load_llm_from_config
 from langchain.prompts.loading import load_prompt, load_prompt_from_config
@@ -372,6 +372,28 @@ def _load_vector_db_qa_with_sources_chain(
     )
 
 
+def _load_retrieval_qa(config: dict, **kwargs: Any) -> RetrievalQA:
+    if "retriever" in kwargs:
+        retriever = kwargs.pop("retriever")
+    else:
+        raise ValueError("`retriever` must be present.")
+    if "combine_documents_chain" in config:
+        combine_documents_chain_config = config.pop("combine_documents_chain")
+        combine_documents_chain = load_chain_from_config(combine_documents_chain_config)
+    elif "combine_documents_chain_path" in config:
+        combine_documents_chain = load_chain(config.pop("combine_documents_chain_path"))
+    else:
+        raise ValueError(
+            "One of `combine_documents_chain` or "
+            "`combine_documents_chain_path` must be present."
+        )
+    return RetrievalQA(
+        combine_documents_chain=combine_documents_chain,
+        retriever=retriever,
+        **config,
+    )
+
+
 def _load_vector_db_qa(config: dict, **kwargs: Any) -> VectorDBQA:
     if "vectorstore" in kwargs:
         vectorstore = kwargs.pop("vectorstore")
@@ -459,6 +481,7 @@ type_to_loader_dict = {
     "sql_database_chain": _load_sql_database_chain,
     "vector_db_qa_with_sources_chain": _load_vector_db_qa_with_sources_chain,
     "vector_db_qa": _load_vector_db_qa,
+    "retrieval_qa": _load_retrieval_qa,
 }
 
 

langchain/chains/retrieval_qa/base.py

@@ -183,6 +183,11 @@ class RetrievalQA(BaseRetrievalQA):
     async def _aget_docs(self, question: str) -> List[Document]:
         return await self.retriever.aget_relevant_documents(question)
 
+    @property
+    def _chain_type(self) -> str:
+        """Return the chain type."""
+        return "retrieval_qa"
+
 
 class VectorDBQA(BaseRetrievalQA):
     """Chain for question-answering against a vector database."""

tests/integration_tests/chains/test_retrieval_qa.py

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+"""Test RetrievalQA functionality."""
+from pathlib import Path
+
+from langchain.chains import RetrievalQA
+from langchain.chains.loading import load_chain
+from langchain.document_loaders import TextLoader
+from langchain.embeddings.openai import OpenAIEmbeddings
+from langchain.llms import OpenAI
+from langchain.text_splitter import CharacterTextSplitter
+from langchain.vectorstores import Chroma
+
+
+def test_retrieval_qa_saving_loading(tmp_path: Path) -> None:
+    """Test saving and loading."""
+    loader = TextLoader("docs/modules/state_of_the_union.txt")
+    documents = loader.load()
+    text_splitter = CharacterTextSplitter(chunk_size=1000, chunk_overlap=0)
+    texts = text_splitter.split_documents(documents)
+    embeddings = OpenAIEmbeddings()
+    docsearch = Chroma.from_documents(texts, embeddings)
+    qa = RetrievalQA.from_llm(llm=OpenAI(), retriever=docsearch.as_retriever())
+
+    file_path = tmp_path / "RetrievalQA_chain.yaml"
+    qa.save(file_path=file_path)
+    qa_loaded = load_chain(file_path, retriever=docsearch.as_retriever())
+
+    assert qa_loaded == qa