# retrievers

> **Module** in `langchain_community`

📖 [View in docs](https://reference.langchain.com/python/langchain-community/retrievers)

**Retriever** class returns Documents given a text **query**.

It is more general than a vector store. A retriever does not need to be able to
store documents, only to return (or retrieve) it. Vector stores can be used as
the backbone of a retriever, but there are other types of retrievers as well.

**Class hierarchy:**

.. code-block::

    BaseRetriever --> <name>Retriever  # Examples: ArxivRetriever, MergerRetriever

**Main helpers:**

.. code-block::

    Document, Serializable, Callbacks,
    CallbackManagerForRetrieverRun, AsyncCallbackManagerForRetrieverRun

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[View source on GitHub](https://github.com/langchain-ai/langchain-community/blob/4b280287bd55b99b44db2dd849f02d66c89534d5/libs/community/langchain_community/retrievers/__init__.py)