Passing a numpy array to a tensorflow Queue

Question

I have a NumPy array and would like to read it in TensorFlow\'s code using a Queue. I would like the queue to return the whole data shuffled, some specified number of epochs

Answer 1

You could create another queue, enqueue your data onto it num_epoch times, close it, and then hook it up to your batch. To save memory, you can make this queue small, and enqueue items onto it in parallel. There will be a bit of mixing between epochs. To fully prevent mixing, you could take code below with num_epochs=1 and call it num_epochs times.

tf.reset_default_graph()
data = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4])
num_epochs = 5
queue1_input = tf.placeholder(tf.int32)
queue1 = tf.FIFOQueue(capacity=10, dtypes=[tf.int32], shapes=[()])

def create_session():
    config = tf.ConfigProto()
    config.operation_timeout_in_ms=20000
    return tf.InteractiveSession(config=config)

enqueue_op = queue1.enqueue_many(queue1_input)
close_op = queue1.close()
dequeue_op = queue1.dequeue()
batch = tf.train.shuffle_batch([dequeue_op], batch_size=4, capacity=5, min_after_dequeue=4)

sess = create_session()

def fill_queue():
    for i in range(num_epochs):
        sess.run(enqueue_op, feed_dict={queue1_input: data})
    sess.run(close_op)

fill_thread = threading.Thread(target=fill_queue, args=())
fill_thread.start()

# read the data from queue shuffled
tf.train.start_queue_runners()
try:
    while True:
        print batch.eval()
except tf.errors.OutOfRangeError:
    print "Done"

BTW, enqueue_many pattern above will hang when the queue is not large enough to load the entire numpy dataset into it. You could give yourself flexibility to have a smaller queue by loading the data in chunks as below.

tf.reset_default_graph()
data = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4])
queue1_capacity = 2
num_epochs = 2
queue1_input = tf.placeholder(tf.int32)
queue1 = tf.FIFOQueue(capacity=queue1_capacity, dtypes=[tf.int32], shapes=[()])

enqueue_op = queue1.enqueue_many(queue1_input)
close_op = queue1.close()
dequeue_op = queue1.dequeue()

def dequeue():
    try:
        while True:
            print sess.run(dequeue_op)
    except:
        return 

def enqueue():
    for i in range(num_epochs):
        start_pos = 0
        while start_pos < len(data):
            end_pos = start_pos+queue1_capacity
            data_chunk = data[start_pos: end_pos]
            sess.run(enqueue_op, feed_dict={queue1_input: data_chunk})
            start_pos += queue1_capacity
    sess.run(close_op)

sess = create_session()

enqueue_thread = threading.Thread(target=enqueue, args=())
enqueue_thread.start()

dequeue_thread = threading.Thread(target=dequeue, args=())
dequeue_thread.start()