Designing TensorFlow Modeling Code For TFX

When designing your TensorFlow modeling code for TFX there are a few items to be aware of, including the choice of a modeling API.

  • Consumes: SavedModel from Transform, and data from ExampleGen
  • Emits: Trained model in SavedModel format

Your model's input layer should consume from the SavedModel that was created by a Transform component, and the layers of the Transform model should be included with your model so that when you export your SavedModel and EvalSavedModel they will include the transformations that were created by the Transform component.

A typical TensorFlow model design for TFX looks like this:

def _build_estimator(tf_transform_dir,
                     config,
                     hidden_units=None,
                     warm_start_from=None):
  """Build an estimator for predicting the tipping behavior of taxi riders.

  Args:
    tf_transform_dir: directory in which the tf-transform model was written
      during the preprocessing step.
    config: tf.contrib.learn.RunConfig defining the runtime environment for the
      estimator (including model_dir).
    hidden_units: [int], the layer sizes of the DNN (input layer first)
    warm_start_from: Optional directory to warm start from.

  Returns:
    Resulting DNNLinearCombinedClassifier.
  """
  metadata_dir = os.path.join(tf_transform_dir,
                              transform_fn_io.TRANSFORMED_METADATA_DIR)
  transformed_metadata = metadata_io.read_metadata(metadata_dir)
  transformed_feature_spec = transformed_metadata.schema.as_feature_spec()

  transformed_feature_spec.pop(_transformed_name(_LABEL_KEY))

  real_valued_columns = [
      tf.feature_column.numeric_column(key, shape=())
      for key in _transformed_names(_DENSE_FLOAT_FEATURE_KEYS)
  ]
  categorical_columns = [
      tf.feature_column.categorical_column_with_identity(
          key, num_buckets=_VOCAB_SIZE + _OOV_SIZE, default_value=0)
      for key in _transformed_names(_VOCAB_FEATURE_KEYS)
  ]
  categorical_columns += [
      tf.feature_column.categorical_column_with_identity(
          key, num_buckets=_FEATURE_BUCKET_COUNT, default_value=0)
      for key in _transformed_names(_BUCKET_FEATURE_KEYS)
  ]
  categorical_columns += [
      tf.feature_column.categorical_column_with_identity(
          key, num_buckets=num_buckets, default_value=0)
      for key, num_buckets in zip(
          _transformed_names(_CATEGORICAL_FEATURE_KEYS),  #
          _MAX_CATEGORICAL_FEATURE_VALUES)
  ]
  return tf.estimator.DNNLinearCombinedClassifier(
      config=config,
      linear_feature_columns=categorical_columns,
      dnn_feature_columns=real_valued_columns,
      dnn_hidden_units=hidden_units or [100, 70, 50, 25],
      warm_start_from=warm_start_from)