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# tf.data -- Input Pipeline API

The tf.data API enables you to build complex input pipelines from simple, reusable pieces. For example, the pipeline for an image model might aggregate data from files in a distributed file system, apply random perturbations to each image, and merge randomly selected images into a batch for training. The pipeline for a text model might involve extracting symbols from raw text data, converting them to embedding identifiers with a lookup table, and batching together sequences of different lengths. The tf.data API makes it possible to handle large amounts of data, different data formats, and perform complex transformations.

The tf.data API introduces a tf.data.Dataset abstraction that represents a sequence of elements, in which each element consists of one or more Tensor objects. For example, in an image pipeline, an element might be a single training example, with a pair of tensors representing the image and its label.

There are two distinct ways to create a dataset:

• A data source constructs a Dataset from data stored in memory in one ore more files.

• A data transformation constructs a dataset from one or more tf.data.Dataset objects.

## Basic mechanics

To create an input pipeline, you must start with a data source. For example, to construct a Dataset from data in memory, you can use tf.data.Dataset.from_tensors() or tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices(). Alternatively, if your input data is stored in a file in the recommended TFRecord format, you can use tf.data.TFRecordDataset().

Once you have a Dataset object, you can transform it into a new Dataset by chaining method calls on the tf.data.Dataset object. For example, you can apply per-element transformations such as Dataset.map(), and multi-element transformations such as Dataset.batch(). See the documentation for tf.data.Dataset for a complete list of transformations.

The Dataset object is a Python iterable. This makes it possible to consume its elements using a for loop:

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(10)
for elem in dataset:
print(elem.numpy())  # prints 0, 1, ..., 9


or by explicitly creating a Python iterator using iter and consuming its elements using next:

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(10)
it = iter(dataset)
print(next(it))  # prints 0
print(next(it))  # prints 1


Alternatively, dataset elements can be consumed using the reduce transformation, which reduces all elements to produce a single result. The following example illustrates how to use the reduce transformation to compute the sum of a dataset of integers.

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices([8, 3, 0, 8, 2, 1])
print(dataset.reduce(0, lambda state, value: state + value))  # prints 22


### Dataset structure

A dataset comprises elements that each have the same structure. An element contains one or more tf.Tensor objects, called components. Each component has a tf.DType representing the type of elements in the tensor, and a tf.TensorShape representing the (possibly partially specified) static shape of each element.

The Dataset transformations support datasets of any structure. When using the Dataset.map(), Dataset.flat_map(), and Dataset.filter() transformations, which apply a function to each element, the element structure determines the arguments of the function:

dataset1 = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices(tf.random.uniform([4, 10]))
dataset1 = dataset1.map(lambda x: ...)

dataset2 = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices(
(tf.random.uniform([4]),
tf.random.uniform([4, 100], maxval=100, dtype=tf.int32)))
dataset2 = dataset2.flat_map(lambda x, y: ...)

# Note: Argument destructuring is not available in Python 3.
dataset3 = tf.data.Dataset.zip((dataset1, dataset2))
dataset3 = dataset3.filter(lambda x, (y, z): ...)


### Consuming NumPy arrays

If all of your input data fit in memory, the simplest way to create a Dataset from them is to convert them to tf.Tensor objects and use Dataset.from_tensor_slices().

# Load the training data into two NumPy arrays, for example using np.load().
features = data["features"]
labels = data["labels"]

# Assume that each row of features corresponds to the same row as labels.
assert features.shape[0] == labels.shape[0]

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices((features, labels))


Note that the above code snippet will embed the features and labels arrays in your TensorFlow graph as tf.constant() operations. This works well for a small dataset, but wastes memory---because the contents of the array will be copied multiple times---and can run into the 2GB limit for the tf.GraphDef protocol buffer.

### Consuming TFRecord data

The tf.data API supports a variety of file formats so that you can process large datasets that do not fit in memory. For example, the TFRecord file format is a simple record-oriented binary format that many TensorFlow applications use for training data. The tf.data.TFRecordDataset class enables you to stream over the contents of one or more TFRecord files as part of an input pipeline.

# Creates a dataset that reads all of the examples from two files.
filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)


The filenames argument to the TFRecordDataset initializer can either be a string, a list of strings, or a tf.Tensor of strings. Therefore if you have two sets of files for training and validation purposes, you can create a factory method that produces the dataset, taking filenames as an input argument:

def make_dataset(filenames)
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(...)  # Parse the record into tensors.
dataset = dataset.repeat()  # Repeat the input indefinitely.
dataset = dataset.batch(32)

training_dataset = make_dataset(["/var/data/training1.tfrecord", ...])
validation_dataset = make_dataset(["/var/data/validation1.tfrecord", ...])


### Consuming text data

Many datasets are distributed as one or more text files. The tf.data.TextLineDataset provides an easy way to extract lines from one or more text files. Given one or more filenames, a TextLineDataset will produce one string-valued element per line of those files.

filenames = ["/var/data/file1.txt", "/var/data/file2.txt"]
dataset = tf.data.TextLineDataset(filenames)


By default, a TextLineDataset yields every line of each file, which may not be desirable, for example if the file starts with a header line, or contains comments. These lines can be removed using the Dataset.skip() and Dataset.filter() transformations. To apply these transformations to each file separately, we use Dataset.flat_map() to create a nested Dataset for each file.

filenames = ["/var/data/file1.txt", "/var/data/file2.txt"]

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices(filenames)

# Use Dataset.flat_map() to transform each file as a separate nested dataset,
# and then concatenate their contents sequentially into a single "flat" dataset.
#
# * Skip the first line (header row).
# * Filter out lines beginning with "#" (comments).
dataset = dataset.flat_map(
lambda filename: (
tf.data.TextLineDataset(filename)
.skip(1)
.filter(lambda line: tf.not_equal(tf.strings.substr(line, 0, 1), "#"))))


### Consuming CSV data

The CSV file format is a popular format for storing tabular data in plain text. The tf.data.experimental.CsvDataset class provides a way to extract records from one or more CSV files that comply with RFC 4180. Given one or more filenames and a list of defaults, a CsvDataset will produce a tuple of elements whose types correspond to the types of the defaults provided, per CSV record.

# Creates a dataset that reads all of the records from two CSV files, each with
# eight float columns.
filenames = ["/var/data/file1.csv", "/var/data/file2.csv"]
record_defaults = [tf.float32] * 8   # Eight required float columns
dataset = tf.data.experimental.CsvDataset(filenames, record_defaults)


If some columns are empty, you can provide defaults instead of types.

# Creates a dataset that reads all of the records from two CSV files, each with
# four float columns which may have missing values.
record_defaults = [[0.0]] * 8
dataset = tf.data.experimental.CsvDataset(filenames, record_defaults)


By default, a CsvDataset yields every column of every line of the file, which may not be desirable, for example if the file starts with a header line that should be ignored, or if some columns are not required in the input. These lines and fields can be removed with the header and select_cols arguments respectively.

# Creates a dataset that reads all of the records from two CSV files with
# headers, extracting float data from columns 2 and 4.
record_defaults = [[0.0]] * 2  # Only provide defaults for the selected columns
dataset = tf.data.experimental.CsvDataset(filenames, record_defaults, header=True, select_cols=[2,4])


## Preprocessing data

The Dataset.map(f) transformation produces a new dataset by applying a given function f to each element of the input dataset. It is based on the map() function that is commonly applied to lists (and other structures) in functional programming languages. The function f takes the tf.Tensor objects that represent a single element in the input, and returns the tf.Tensor objects that will represent a single element in the new dataset. Its implementation uses standard TensorFlow operations to transform one element into another.

This section covers common examples of how to use Dataset.map().

### Parsing tf.Example protocol buffer messages

Many input pipelines extract tf.train.Example protocol buffer messages from a TFRecord format. Each tf.train.Example record contains one or more "features", and the input pipeline typically converts these features into tensors.

# Transforms a scalar string example_proto into a pair of a scalar string and
# a scalar integer, representing an image and its label, respectively.
def _parse_function(example_proto):
features = {"image": tf.FixedLenFeature((), tf.string, default_value=""),
"label": tf.FixedLenFeature((), tf.int64, default_value=0)}
parsed_features = tf.parse_single_example(example_proto, features)
return parsed_features["image"], parsed_features["label"]

# Creates a dataset that reads all of the examples from two files, and extracts
# the image and label features.
filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(_parse_function)


### Decoding image data and resizing it

When training a neural network on real-world image data, it is often necessary to convert images of different sizes to a common size, so that they may be batched into a fixed size.

# Reads an image from a file, decodes it into a dense tensor, and resizes it
# to a fixed shape.
def _parse_function(filename, label):
image_decoded = tf.image.decode_jpeg(image_string)
image_resized = tf.image.resize(image_decoded, [28, 28])
return image_resized, label

# A vector of filenames.
filenames = tf.constant(["/var/data/image1.jpg", "/var/data/image2.jpg", ...])

# labels[i] is the label for the image in filenames[i].
labels = tf.constant([0, 37, ...])

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices((filenames, labels))
dataset = dataset.map(_parse_function)


### Applying arbitrary Python logic

For performance reasons, we encourage you to use TensorFlow operations for preprocessing your data whenever possible. However, it is sometimes useful to call upon external Python libraries when parsing your input data. To do so, invoke, the tf.py_function() operation in a Dataset.map() transformation.

import cv2

# Use a custom OpenCV function to read the image, instead of the standard
# TensorFlow tf.io.read_file() operation.
return image_decoded, label

# Use standard TensorFlow operations to resize the image to a fixed shape.
def _resize_function(image_decoded, label):
image_decoded.set_shape([None, None, None])
image_resized = tf.image.resize(image_decoded, [28, 28])
return image_resized, label

filenames = ["/var/data/image1.jpg", "/var/data/image2.jpg", ...]
labels = [0, 37, 29, 1, ...]

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.from_tensor_slices((filenames, labels))
dataset = dataset.map(
lambda filename, label: tuple(tf.py_function(
dataset = dataset.map(_resize_function)


## Batching dataset elements

### Simple batching

The simplest form of batching stacks n consecutive elements of a dataset into a single element. The Dataset.batch() transformation does exactly this, with the same constraints as the tf.stack() operator, applied to each component of the elements: i.e. for each component i, all elements must have a tensor of the exact same shape.

inc_dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(100)
dec_dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(0, -100, -1)
dataset = tf.data.Dataset.zip((inc_dataset, dec_dataset))
batched_dataset = dataset.batch(4)

it = iter(batched_dataset)
print(next(it))  # ==> ([0, 1, 2,   3],   [ 0, -1,  -2,  -3])
print(next(it))  # ==> ([4, 5, 6,   7],   [-4, -5,  -6,  -7])
print(next(it))  # ==> ([8, 9, 10, 11],   [-8, -9, -10, -11])


The above recipe works for tensors that all have the same size. However, many models (e.g. sequence models) work with input data that can have varying size (e.g. sequences of different lengths). To handle this case, the Dataset.padded_batch() transformation enables you to batch tensors of different shape by specifying one or more dimensions in which they may be padded.

dataset = tf.data.Dataset.range(100)
dataset = dataset.map(lambda x: tf.fill([tf.cast(x, tf.int32)], x))

it = iter(batched_dataset)
print(next(it))  # ==> [[0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0], [2, 2, 0], [3, 3, 3]]
print(next(it))  # ==> [[4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 0, 0],
#      [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 0, 0],
#      [6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 0],
#      [7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7]]


The Dataset.padded_batch() transformation allows you to set different padding for each dimension of each component, and it may be variable-length (signified by None in the example above) or constant-length. It is also possible to override the padding value, which defaults to 0.

## Training workflows

### Processing multiple epochs

The tf.data API offers two main ways to process multiple epochs of the same data.

The simplest way to iterate over a dataset in multiple epochs is to use the Dataset.repeat() transformation. For example, to create a dataset that repeats its input for 10 epochs:

filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(...)
dataset = dataset.repeat(10)
dataset = dataset.batch(32)


Applying the Dataset.repeat() transformation with no arguments will repeat the input indefinitely. The Dataset.repeat() transformation concatenates its arguments without signaling the end of one epoch and the beginning of the next epoch.

If you would like to perform custom computation (e.g. to collect statistics) at the end of each epoch, you can do so as follows:

filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(...)
dataset = dataset.batch(32)

# Compute for 100 epochs.
for _ in range(100):
for elem in dataset:
# Perform per-element computation here

# Perform per-epoch computation here


### Randomly shuffling input data

The Dataset.shuffle() transformation randomly shuffles the input dataset using a similar algorithm to tf.RandomShuffleQueue: it maintains a fixed-size buffer and chooses the next element uniformly at random from that buffer.

filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(...)
dataset = dataset.shuffle(buffer_size=10000)
dataset = dataset.batch(32)
dataset = dataset.repeat()


## Using high-level APIs

### tf.keras

The tf.keras API simplifies many aspects of creating and executing machine learning models. Its .fit() and .validate() APIs support datasets as inputs:

def make_dataset(filenames)
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)
dataset = dataset.map(...)
dataset = dataset.shuffle(buffer_size=10000)
dataset = dataset.batch(32)

model = ...

training_dataset = make_dataset(["/var/data/train1.tfrecord", ...])
validation_dataset = make_dataset(["/var/data/validate1.tfrecord", ...])

model.fit(training_dataset, ...)
model.validate(validation_dataset, ...)


### tf.estimator

To use a Dataset in the input_fn of a tf.estimator.Estimator, simply return the Dataset and the framework will take care of consuming its elements for you. For example:

def dataset_input_fn():
filenames = ["/var/data/file1.tfrecord", "/var/data/file2.tfrecord"]
dataset = tf.data.TFRecordDataset(filenames)

# Use tf.parse_single_example() to extract data from a tf.Example
# protocol buffer, and perform any additional per-record preprocessing.
def parser(record):
keys_to_features = {
"image_data": tf.FixedLenFeature((), tf.string, default_value=""),
"date_time": tf.FixedLenFeature((), tf.int64, default_value=""),
"label": tf.FixedLenFeature((), tf.int64,
default_value=tf.zeros([], dtype=tf.int64)),
}
parsed = tf.parse_single_example(record, keys_to_features)

# Perform additional preprocessing on the parsed data.
image = tf.image.decode_jpeg(parsed["image_data"])
image = tf.reshape(image, [299, 299, 1])
label = tf.cast(parsed["label"], tf.int32)

return {"image_data": image, "date_time": parsed["date_time"]}, label

# Use Dataset.map() to build a pair of a feature dictionary and a label
# tensor for each example.
dataset = dataset.map(parser)
dataset = dataset.shuffle(buffer_size=10000)
dataset = dataset.batch(32)
dataset = dataset.repeat(num_epochs)

# Each element of dataset is tuple containing a dictionary of features
# (in which each value is a batch of values for that feature), and a batch of
# labels.
return dataset
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