djl

TimeSeries support

This module contains the time series model support extension with GluonTS.

Right now, the package provides the BaseTimeSeriesTranslator and transform package that allows you to do inference from your pre-trained time series model.

Now it contains:

The following examples are included for both training and inference:

Module structure

Forecast

An abstract class representing the forecast result.

It contains the distribution of the results, the start date of the forecast, the frequency of the time series, etc. User can get all these information by simply invoking the corresponding attribute.

TimeSeriesData

The data entry for managing timing data in preprocessing as an input to the transform method. It contains a key-value pair list mapping from the time series name field to NDArray.

dataset

timefeature

This module contains all the methods for generating time features from the predicted frequency.

transform

In general, it gets the TimeSeriesData and transform it to another TimeSeriesData that can possibly contain more fields. It can be done by defining a set of of “actions” to the raw dataset in training or just invoking at translator in inference.

This action usually create some additional features or transform an existing feature.

convert

feature

field

split

InstanceSampler

Sample index for splitting based on training or inferring.

PredictionSampler extends InstanceSampler for the prediction including test and valid. It would return the end of the time series bound as the dividing line between the future and past.

translator

Existing time series model translators and corresponding factories. Now we have developed DeepARTranslator and TransformerTranslator for users.

The following pseudocode demonstrates how to create a DeepARTranslator with arguments.

	Map<String, Object> arguments = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();
	arguments.put("prediction_length", 28);
	arguments.put("use_feat_dynamic_real", false);
	DeepARTranslator.Builder builder = DeepARTranslator.builder(arguments);
	DeepARTranslator translator = builder.build();

If you want to customize your own time series model translator, you can easily use the transform package for your data preprocess.

See examples for more details.

Simple Example

To demonstrate how to use the timeseries package, we trained a DeepAR model on a simple dataset and used it for prediction. This dataset contains monthly air passenger numbers from 1949 to 1960. We will train on the first 9 years of data and predict the last 36 months of data.

Define Data

In order to realize the preprocessing of time series data, we define the TimeSeriesData as the input of the Translator, which is used to store the feature fields and perform corresponding transformations.

Here we define how to get TimeSeriesData from the dataset.

public static class AirPassengers {

    private static TimeSeriesData getTimeSeriesData(NDManager manager, URL url) throws IOException {
        try (Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(url.openStream(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)) {
            AirPassengers passengers =
                    new GsonBuilder()
                            .setDateFormat("yyyy-MM")
                            .create()
                            .fromJson(reader, AirPassengers.class);

            LocalDateTime start =
                    passengers.start.toInstant().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toLocalDateTime();
            NDArray target = manager.create(passengers.target);
            TimeSeriesData data = new TimeSeriesData(10);
            data.setStartTime(start);
            data.setField(FieldName.TARGET, target);
            return data;
        }
    }

    private static void saveNDArray(NDArray array) throws IOException {
        Path path = Paths.get("build").resolve(array.getName() + ".npz");
        try (OutputStream os = Files.newOutputStream(path)) {
            new NDList(new NDList(array)).encode(os, true);
        }
    }

    private static final class AirPassengers {

        Date start;
        float[] target;
    }
}

Predict

In djl we need to define Translator to help us with data pre- and post-processing.

    public static float[] predict() throws IOException, TranslateException, ModelException {
        Criteria<TimeSeriesData, Forecast> criteria =
        Criteria.builder()
        .setTypes(TimeSeriesData.class, Forecast.class)
        .optModelUrls("djl://ai.djl.mxnet/deepar/0.0.1/airpassengers")
        .optEngine("MXNet")
        .optTranslatorFactory(new DeferredTranslatorFactory())
        .optArgument("prediction_length", 12)
        .optArgument("freq", "M")
        .optArgument("use_feat_dynamic_real", false)
        .optArgument("use_feat_static_cat", false)
        .optArgument("use_feat_static_real", false)
        .optProgress(new ProgressBar())
        .build();

        String url = "https://resources.djl.ai/test-models/mxnet/timeseries/air_passengers.json";

        try (ZooModel<TimeSeriesData, Forecast> model = criteria.loadModel();
        Predictor<TimeSeriesData, Forecast> predictor = model.newPredictor();
        NDManager manager = NDManager.newBaseManager("MXNet")) {
        TimeSeriesData input = getTimeSeriesData(manager, new URL(url));

        // save data for plotting
        NDArray target = input.get(FieldName.TARGET);
        target.setName("target");
        saveNDArray(target);

        Forecast forecast = predictor.predict(input);

        // save data for plotting. Please see the corresponding python script from
        // https://gist.github.com/Carkham/a5162c9298bc51fec648a458a3437008
        NDArray samples = ((SampleForecast) forecast).getSortedSamples();
        samples.setName("samples");
        saveNDArray(samples);
        return forecast.mean().toFloatArray();
    }

Visualize

simple_forecast

Note that the prediction results are displayed in the form of probability distributions, and the shaded areas represent different prediction intervals.

Since djl doesn’t support drawing yet, you can find our script for visualization here.

The full source code for this example is available here

Documentation

The latest javadocs can be found on here.

You can also build the latest javadocs locally using the following command:

./gradlew javadoc

The javadocs output is built in the build/doc/javadoc folder.

Installation

You can pull the module from the central Maven repository by including the following dependency in your pom.xml file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>ai.djl.timeseries</groupId>
    <artifactId>timeseries</artifactId>
    <version>0.31.0</version>
</dependency>