tf.keras.preprocessing.text_dataset_from_directory

Generates a dataset from text files in a directory.

tf.keras.preprocessing.text_dataset_from_directory(
    directory,
    labels='inferred',
    label_mode='int',
    class_names=None,
    batch_size=32,
    max_length=None,
    shuffle=True,
    seed=None,
    validation_split=None,
    subset=None,
    follow_links=False,
    format='tf',
    verbose=True
)

Used in the notebooks

Used in the tutorials

If your directory structure is:

main_directory/
...class_a/
......a_text_1.txt
......a_text_2.txt
...class_b/
......b_text_1.txt
......b_text_2.txt

Then calling text_dataset_from_directory(main_directory, labels='inferred') will return a dataset that yields batches of texts from the subdirectories class_a and class_b, together with labels 0 and 1 (0 corresponding to class_a and 1 corresponding to class_b).

Only .txt files are supported at this time.

By default, this function will return a tf.data.Dataset object. You can set format="grain" to return a grain.IterDataset object instead, which removes the TensorFlow dependency.

directory Directory where the data is located. If labels is "inferred", it should contain subdirectories, each containing text files for a class. Otherwise, the directory structure is ignored.
labels Either "inferred" (labels are generated from the directory structure), None (no labels), or a list/tuple of integer labels of the same size as the number of text files found in the directory. Labels should be sorted according to the alphanumeric order of the text file paths (obtained via os.walk(directory) in Python).
label_mode String describing the encoding of labels. Options are:

  • "int": means that the labels are encoded as integers (e.g. for sparse_categorical_crossentropy loss).
  • "categorical" means that the labels are encoded as a categorical vector (e.g. for categorical_crossentropy loss).
  • "binary" means that the labels (there can be only 2) are encoded as float32 scalars with values 0 or 1 (e.g. for binary_crossentropy).
  • None (no labels).
class_names Only valid if "labels" is "inferred". This is the explicit list of class names (must match names of subdirectories). Used to control the order of the classes (otherwise alphanumerical order is used).
batch_size Size of the batches of data. If None, the data will not be batched (the dataset will yield individual samples). Defaults to 32.
max_length Maximum size of a text string. Texts longer than this will be truncated to max_length.
shuffle Whether to shuffle the data. If set to False, sorts the data in alphanumeric order. Defaults to True.
seed Optional random seed for shuffling and transformations.
validation_split Optional float between 0 and 1, fraction of data to reserve for validation.
subset Subset of the data to return. One of "training", "validation" or "both". Only used if validation_split is set. When subset="both", the utility returns a tuple of two datasets (the training and validation datasets respectively).
follow_links Whether to visits subdirectories pointed to by symlinks. Defaults to False.
format The format of the return object. Defaults to "tf". Available options are:
  • "tf": returns a tf.data.Dataset object. Requires TensorFlow to be installed.
  • "grain": returns a grain.IterDataset object. Requires Grain to be installed.
    • verbose Whether to display number information on classes and number of files found. Defaults to True.

    A tf.data.Dataset (format="tf") or grain.IterDataset (format="grain") object.

    When format="tf":

    • If label_mode is None, it yields string tensors of shape (batch_size,), containing the contents of a batch of text files.
    • Otherwise, it yields a tuple (texts, labels), where texts has shape (batch_size,) and labels follows the format described below.

    When format="grain":

    • If label_mode is None, it yields a list of Python strings containing the contents of a batch of text files.
    • Otherwise, it yields a tuple (texts, labels), where texts is a list of Python strings and labels follows the format described below.

    Rules regarding labels format:

    • if label_mode is int, the labels are an int32 tensor of shape (batch_size,).
    • if label_mode is binary, the labels are a float32 tensor of 1s and 0s of shape (batch_size, 1).
    • if label_mode is categorical, the labels are a float32 tensor of shape (batch_size, num_classes), representing a one-hot encoding of the class index.