TensorFlow Session Class and run() Function

This section provides a tutorial example on how to create a TensoFlow session object and run any given nodes (tensor operations) in a tensor flow graph. You need to run a special operation, variables_initializer, to load the initial value to a variable node to avoid 'uninitialized value' error.

Once a tensor expression as a tensor flow graph, we need to find a way to evaluate the tension expression to get the final output tensor.

This is done by creating a TensorFlow Session object and calling its run() method using the following syntax. Note that if the graph has variable node, you need run a special operation to initialize it with its initial value.

# creating a session object, s.
s = tf.Session()

# initialize "variable" node, v.
x = tf.variables_initializer(v)
s.run(x)

# evaluate the target node, n,
# with a list of parameter tensors, one for each "placeholder" node.
o = s.run(n, p)

# o is the output tensor, not a node (operation)

Let's try this on our first tensor flow graph created earlier for the tensor operation of [a] = ([b]+[c])*([c]+[2]). Here is the my version of the complete script:

#- first_tensor_graph.py
#- Copyright (c) 2019 HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
#
import tensorflow as tf

# create 2 variable nodes with initial values prepared,
# but not loaded
b = tf.Variable([[4,4,4],[4,4,4],[4,4,4]])
c = tf.Variable([[3,3,3],[3,3,3],[3,3,3]])

# create 1 constant node with a fixed value
s = tf.constant([[2,2,2],[2,2,2],[2,2,2]])

# create 2 intermediate nodes
t1 = tf.add(b,c)
t2 = tf.add(c,s)

# create the final node - the last operation
a = tf.multiply(t1,t2)

# create a TensorFlow session object to run the graph
ss = tf.Session()

# create special nodes for initialization operations
bi = tf.variables_initializer([b])
ci = tf.variables_initializer([c])

# run initialization operations - loading initial values
ss.run(bi)
ss.run(ci)

# run the last operation
out = ss.run(a)

# print the output
print(out)

If you run the above script, you will get the following output, which is correct. You can verify this by performing the calculation yourself.

herong$ python3 first_tensor_graph.py

[[35 35 35]
 [35 35 35]
 [35 35 35]]

You can actually call ses.run() on any nodes to see their outputs, since they are all tensor operations. Try it yourself.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Deep Playground for Classical Neural Networks

 Building Neural Networks with Python

 Simple Example of Neural Networks

TensorFlow - Machine Learning Platform

 What Is TensorFlow

 "tensorflow" - TensorFlow Python Library

 "tensorflow" Interactive Test Web Page

 Tensor and Tensor Flow Graph

 Tensor Operation Properties

TensorFlow Session Class and run() Function

 TensorFlow Variable Class and load() Function

 Linear Regression with TensorFlow

 tensorflow.examples.tutorials.mnist Module

 mnist.read_data_sets() Is Deprecated

 Simple TensorFlow Model on MNIST Database

 Commonly Used TensorFlow functions

 PyTorch - Machine Learning Platform

 Gradio - ML Demo Platform

 CNN (Convolutional Neural Network)

 RNN (Recurrent Neural Network)

 GNN (Graph Neural Network)

 GAN (Generative Adversarial Network)

 Performance Evaluation Metrics

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB