Loading a csv file in what-if tool to explore data

[ellehoej]

Hi,
I'm trying to use the functionality in the What-If Tool, as described in the Readme file, of loading a .csv file in order to just explore and visualise the data.
However, when I specify the file path to the csv (in this case to "adult.csv" which is in the Tensorboard logdir folder) in "Path to examples", I keep getting a RequestNetworkError:

Request failed: RequestNetworkError: RequestNetworkError: 400 at /data/plugin/whatif/examples_from_path?examples_path=adult.csv&max_examples=1000&sampling_odds=1&sequence_examples=false

I have tried to change the formatting and the location of the file with no success.

Is it possible for you to elaborate on the process of loading a .csv file or perhaps give an example?

Thanks,
Mads

[jameswex]

Please try using the full path to the file on your machine, as opposed to a relative path from the logdir. I believe that will work, and if it does, I will update the README to be more explicit about the csv path.

[tomalbrecht]

Same Problem here with tf1.12 and full path (OSX Mojave).

Request failed: RequestNetworkError: RequestNetworkError: 400 at /data/plugin/whatif/examples_from_path?examples_path=%2FUsers%2Ftom%2Ftitanic.csv&max_examples=1000&sampling_odds=1&sequence_examples=false

[ellehoej]

I've tried full (and relative) path on Linux and Windows (tensorboard 1.12.2) but I still get the same error as above.

[jameswex]

Does the device/container on which the tensorboard server is executing have access to that file path? The file is loaded by the server itself and the path must be something accessible by the server, not the client/browser connecting to the tensorboard. The documentation isn't clear on this, and I will fix it to be clear. And perhaps we should enable CSV upload from a client so the server doesn't need to be able to load the CSV directly.

Locally I've verified that if I build and run tensorboard from HEAD on my machine ("bazel run tensorboard:tensorboard -- --logdir /tmp") and then navigate to the WIT tab on that tensorboard, and provide a CSV file that has been downloaded to that local machine as the path to examples ("/Users/jwexler/Downloads/test.csv"), that the data points from the CSV load correctly in the tool.

Another thing to check out is the new Jupyter/colab notebook mode where you use WIT directly inside a notebook instead of TensorBoard. In that case, you can load a CSV and convert it to a list of tf.Examples for use in WIT, as shown in this example notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/tensorboard/blob/master/tensorboard/plugins/interactive_inference/What_If_Tool_Notebook_Usage.ipynb

[ellehoej]

Thanks for the effort @jameswex. It might be something with access, although Tensorboard picks up logfiles from the location of the csv.
I've tried through a docker container on Linux and more simple through Tensorboard in conda on Windows. I've installed through pip or conda.
Both times the server sees the logfiles, but not the csv.
The jupyter plugin is great, but it sounds good with the possibility of csv upload for quick inspection of a data file.

[jameswex]

Oh, I just realized this bug mentions version 1.12. CSV mode wasn't added until TensorBoard 1.12.2 I believe. Please try upgrading your TB version.

[ellehoej]

I'm using 1.12.2. 😊

[jameswex]

Do you see any errors being printed to stderr/stdlog by the tensorboard server being run, when loading the csv? Also, is it the adult.csv from kaggle https://www.kaggle.com/uciml/adult-census-income/version/3 ?

[ellehoej]

Yes, it's a modified version of the adult data from the original source where I've added headings.
I've tried with other csv's as well.
I don't get any other error than the one specified above. If I deliberately add quotation marks around the path I get an error in the terminal about the server not being able to find the file / wrong formatting.

[jameswex]

Let's debug offline and then update this thread when we figure it out. Send me an email at jwexler [at] google.com, thanks