Authors: Neel Kovelamudi, Francois Chollet
Date created: 2023/06/14
Last modified: 2023/06/30
Description: Complete guide to saving, serializing, and exporting models.
A Keras model consists of multiple components:
The Keras API saves all of these pieces together in a unified format,
marked by the .keras
extension. This is a zip archive consisting of the
following:
model.weights.h5
(for the whole model),
with directory keys for layers and their weights.Let's take a look at how this works.
If you only have 10 seconds to read this guide, here's what you need to know.
Saving a Keras model:
model = ... # Get model (Sequential, Functional Model, or Model subclass)
model.save('path/to/location.keras') # The file needs to end with the .keras extension
Loading the model back:
model = keras.models.load_model('path/to/location.keras')
Now, let's look at the details.
import numpy as np
import keras
from keras import ops
This section is about saving an entire model to a single file. The file will include:
compile()
was called)You can save a model with model.save()
or keras.models.save_model()
(which is equivalent).
You can load it back with keras.models.load_model()
.
The only supported format in Keras 3 is the "Keras v3" format,
which uses the .keras
extension.
Example:
def get_model():
# Create a simple model.
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(32,))
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(1)(inputs)
model = keras.Model(inputs, outputs)
model.compile(optimizer=keras.optimizers.Adam(), loss="mean_squared_error")
return model
model = get_model()
# Train the model.
test_input = np.random.random((128, 32))
test_target = np.random.random((128, 1))
model.fit(test_input, test_target)
# Calling `save('my_model.keras')` creates a zip archive `my_model.keras`.
model.save("my_model.keras")
# It can be used to reconstruct the model identically.
reconstructed_model = keras.models.load_model("my_model.keras")
# Let's check:
np.testing.assert_allclose(
model.predict(test_input), reconstructed_model.predict(test_input)
)
4/4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 8ms/step - loss: 0.4232
4/4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 281us/step
4/4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 373us/step
This section covers the basic workflows for handling custom layers, functions, and models in Keras saving and reloading.
When saving a model that includes custom objects, such as a subclassed Layer,
you must define a get_config()
method on the object class.
If the arguments passed to the constructor (__init__()
method) of the custom object
aren't Python objects (anything other than base types like ints, strings,
etc.), then you must also explicitly deserialize these arguments in the from_config()
class method.
Like this:
class CustomLayer(keras.layers.Layer):
def __init__(self, sublayer, **kwargs):
super().__init__(**kwargs)
self.sublayer = sublayer
def call(self, x):
return self.sublayer(x)
def get_config(self):
base_config = super().get_config()
config = {
"sublayer": keras.saving.serialize_keras_object(self.sublayer),
}
return {**base_config, **config}
@classmethod
def from_config(cls, config):
sublayer_config = config.pop("sublayer")
sublayer = keras.saving.deserialize_keras_object(sublayer_config)
return cls(sublayer, **config)
Please see the Defining the config methods section for more details and examples.
The saved .keras
file is lightweight and does not store the Python code for custom
objects. Therefore, to reload the model, load_model
requires access to the definition
of any custom objects used through one of the following methods:
Below are examples of each workflow:
This is the preferred method, as custom object registration greatly simplifies saving and
loading code. Adding the @keras.saving.register_keras_serializable
decorator to the
class definition of a custom object registers the object globally in a master list,
allowing Keras to recognize the object when loading the model.
Let's create a custom model involving both a custom layer and a custom activation function to demonstrate this.
Example:
# Clear all previously registered custom objects
keras.saving.get_custom_objects().clear()
# Upon registration, you can optionally specify a package or a name.
# If left blank, the package defaults to `Custom` and the name defaults to
# the class name.
@keras.saving.register_keras_serializable(package="MyLayers")
class CustomLayer(keras.layers.Layer):
def __init__(self, factor):
super().__init__()
self.factor = factor
def call(self, x):
return x * self.factor
def get_config(self):
return {"factor": self.factor}
@keras.saving.register_keras_serializable(package="my_package", name="custom_fn")
def custom_fn(x):
return x**2
# Create the model.
def get_model():
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(4,))
mid = CustomLayer(0.5)(inputs)
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(1, activation=custom_fn)(mid)
model = keras.Model(inputs, outputs)
model.compile(optimizer="rmsprop", loss="mean_squared_error")
return model
# Train the model.
def train_model(model):
input = np.random.random((4, 4))
target = np.random.random((4, 1))
model.fit(input, target)
return model
test_input = np.random.random((4, 4))
test_target = np.random.random((4, 1))
model = get_model()
model = train_model(model)
model.save("custom_model.keras")
# Now, we can simply load without worrying about our custom objects.
reconstructed_model = keras.models.load_model("custom_model.keras")
# Let's check:
np.testing.assert_allclose(
model.predict(test_input), reconstructed_model.predict(test_input)
)
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 46ms/step - loss: 0.2571
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 11ms/step
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 12ms/step
load_model()
model = get_model()
model = train_model(model)
# Calling `save('my_model.keras')` creates a zip archive `my_model.keras`.
model.save("custom_model.keras")
# Upon loading, pass a dict containing the custom objects used in the
# `custom_objects` argument of `keras.models.load_model()`.
reconstructed_model = keras.models.load_model(
"custom_model.keras",
custom_objects={"CustomLayer": CustomLayer, "custom_fn": custom_fn},
)
# Let's check:
np.testing.assert_allclose(
model.predict(test_input), reconstructed_model.predict(test_input)
)
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 37ms/step - loss: 0.0535
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 12ms/step
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 12ms/step
Any code within the custom object scope will be able to recognize the custom objects passed to the scope argument. Therefore, loading the model within the scope will allow the loading of our custom objects.
Example:
model = get_model()
model = train_model(model)
model.save("custom_model.keras")
# Pass the custom objects dictionary to a custom object scope and place
# the `keras.models.load_model()` call within the scope.
custom_objects = {"CustomLayer": CustomLayer, "custom_fn": custom_fn}
with keras.saving.custom_object_scope(custom_objects):
reconstructed_model = keras.models.load_model("custom_model.keras")
# Let's check:
np.testing.assert_allclose(
model.predict(test_input), reconstructed_model.predict(test_input)
)
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 40ms/step - loss: 0.0868
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 11ms/step
1/1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0s 11ms/step
This section is about saving only the model's configuration, without its state. The model's configuration (or architecture) specifies what layers the model contains, and how these layers are connected. If you have the configuration of a model, then the model can be created with a freshly initialized state (no weights or compilation information).
The following serialization APIs are available:
keras.models.clone_model(model)
: make a (randomly initialized) copy of a model.get_config()
and cls.from_config()
: retrieve the configuration of a layer or model, and recreate
a model instance from its config, respectively.keras.models.model_to_json()
and keras.models.model_from_json()
: similar, but as JSON strings.keras.saving.serialize_keras_object()
: retrieve the configuration any arbitrary Keras object.keras.saving.deserialize_keras_object()
: recreate an object instance from its configuration.You can do in-memory cloning of a model via keras.models.clone_model()
.
This is equivalent to getting the config then recreating the model from its config
(so it does not preserve compilation information or layer weights values).
Example:
new_model = keras.models.clone_model(model)
get_config()
and from_config()
Calling model.get_config()
or layer.get_config()
will return a Python dict containing
the configuration of the model or layer, respectively. You should define get_config()
to contain arguments needed for the __init__()
method of the model or layer. At loading time,
the from_config(config)
method will then call __init__()
with these arguments to
reconstruct the model or layer.
Layer example:
layer = keras.layers.Dense(3, activation="relu")
layer_config = layer.get_config()
print(layer_config)
{'name': 'dense_4', 'trainable': True, 'dtype': 'float32', 'units': 3, 'activation': 'relu', 'use_bias': True, 'kernel_initializer': {'module': 'keras.src.initializers.random_initializers', 'class_name': 'GlorotUniform', 'config': {'seed': None}, 'registered_name': 'GlorotUniform'}, 'bias_initializer': {'module': 'keras.src.initializers.constant_initializers', 'class_name': 'Zeros', 'config': {}, 'registered_name': 'Zeros'}, 'kernel_regularizer': None, 'bias_regularizer': None, 'kernel_constraint': None, 'bias_constraint': None}
Now let's reconstruct the layer using the from_config()
method:
new_layer = keras.layers.Dense.from_config(layer_config)
Sequential model example:
model = keras.Sequential([keras.Input((32,)), keras.layers.Dense(1)])
config = model.get_config()
new_model = keras.Sequential.from_config(config)
Functional model example:
inputs = keras.Input((32,))
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(1)(inputs)
model = keras.Model(inputs, outputs)
config = model.get_config()
new_model = keras.Model.from_config(config)
to_json()
and keras.models.model_from_json()
This is similar to get_config
/ from_config
, except it turns the model
into a JSON string, which can then be loaded without the original model class.
It is also specific to models, it isn't meant for layers.
Example:
model = keras.Sequential([keras.Input((32,)), keras.layers.Dense(1)])
json_config = model.to_json()
new_model = keras.models.model_from_json(json_config)
The keras.saving.serialize_keras_object()
and keras.saving.deserialize_keras_object()
APIs are general-purpose APIs that can be used to serialize or deserialize any Keras
object and any custom object. It is at the foundation of saving model architecture and is
behind all serialize()
/deserialize()
calls in keras.
Example:
my_reg = keras.regularizers.L1(0.005)
config = keras.saving.serialize_keras_object(my_reg)
print(config)
{'module': 'keras.src.regularizers.regularizers', 'class_name': 'L1', 'config': {'l1': 0.004999999888241291}, 'registered_name': 'L1'}
Note the serialization format containing all the necessary information for proper reconstruction:
module
containing the name of the Keras module or other identifying module the object
comes fromclass_name
containing the name of the object's class.config
with all the information needed to reconstruct the objectregistered_name
for custom objects. See here.Now we can reconstruct the regularizer.
new_reg = keras.saving.deserialize_keras_object(config)
You can choose to only save & load a model's weights. This can be useful if:
Weights can be copied between different objects by using get_weights()
and set_weights()
:
keras.layers.Layer.get_weights()
: Returns a list of NumPy arrays of weight values.keras.layers.Layer.set_weights(weights)
: Sets the model weights to the values
provided (as NumPy arrays).Examples:
Transferring weights from one layer to another, in memory
def create_layer():
layer = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")
layer.build((None, 784))
return layer
layer_1 = create_layer()
layer_2 = create_layer()
# Copy weights from layer 1 to layer 2
layer_2.set_weights(layer_1.get_weights())
Transferring weights from one model to another model with a compatible architecture, in memory
# Create a simple functional model
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(784,), name="digits")
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1")(inputs)
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")(x)
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(10, name="predictions")(x)
functional_model = keras.Model(inputs=inputs, outputs=outputs, name="3_layer_mlp")
# Define a subclassed model with the same architecture
class SubclassedModel(keras.Model):
def __init__(self, output_dim, name=None):
super().__init__(name=name)
self.output_dim = output_dim
self.dense_1 = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1")
self.dense_2 = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")
self.dense_3 = keras.layers.Dense(output_dim, name="predictions")
def call(self, inputs):
x = self.dense_1(inputs)
x = self.dense_2(x)
x = self.dense_3(x)
return x
def get_config(self):
return {"output_dim": self.output_dim, "name": self.name}
subclassed_model = SubclassedModel(10)
# Call the subclassed model once to create the weights.
subclassed_model(np.ones((1, 784)))
# Copy weights from functional_model to subclassed_model.
subclassed_model.set_weights(functional_model.get_weights())
assert len(functional_model.weights) == len(subclassed_model.weights)
for a, b in zip(functional_model.weights, subclassed_model.weights):
np.testing.assert_allclose(a.numpy(), b.numpy())
The case of stateless layers
Because stateless layers do not change the order or number of weights, models can have compatible architectures even if there are extra/missing stateless layers.
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(784,), name="digits")
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1")(inputs)
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")(x)
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(10, name="predictions")(x)
functional_model = keras.Model(inputs=inputs, outputs=outputs, name="3_layer_mlp")
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(784,), name="digits")
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1")(inputs)
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")(x)
# Add a dropout layer, which does not contain any weights.
x = keras.layers.Dropout(0.5)(x)
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(10, name="predictions")(x)
functional_model_with_dropout = keras.Model(
inputs=inputs, outputs=outputs, name="3_layer_mlp"
)
functional_model_with_dropout.set_weights(functional_model.get_weights())
Weights can be saved to disk by calling model.save_weights(filepath)
.
The filename should end in .weights.h5
.
Example:
# Runnable example
sequential_model = keras.Sequential(
[
keras.Input(shape=(784,), name="digits"),
keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1"),
keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2"),
keras.layers.Dense(10, name="predictions"),
]
)
sequential_model.save_weights("my_model.weights.h5")
sequential_model.load_weights("my_model.weights.h5")
Note that changing layer.trainable
may result in a different
layer.weights
ordering when the model contains nested layers.
class NestedDenseLayer(keras.layers.Layer):
def __init__(self, units, name=None):
super().__init__(name=name)
self.dense_1 = keras.layers.Dense(units, name="dense_1")
self.dense_2 = keras.layers.Dense(units, name="dense_2")
def call(self, inputs):
return self.dense_2(self.dense_1(inputs))
nested_model = keras.Sequential([keras.Input((784,)), NestedDenseLayer(10, "nested")])
variable_names = [v.name for v in nested_model.weights]
print("variables: {}".format(variable_names))
print("\nChanging trainable status of one of the nested layers...")
nested_model.get_layer("nested").dense_1.trainable = False
variable_names_2 = [v.name for v in nested_model.weights]
print("\nvariables: {}".format(variable_names_2))
print("variable ordering changed:", variable_names != variable_names_2)
variables: ['kernel', 'bias', 'kernel', 'bias']
Changing trainable status of one of the nested layers...
variables: ['kernel', 'bias', 'kernel', 'bias']
variable ordering changed: False
When loading pretrained weights from a weights file, it is recommended to load the weights into the original checkpointed model, and then extract the desired weights/layers into a new model.
Example:
def create_functional_model():
inputs = keras.Input(shape=(784,), name="digits")
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_1")(inputs)
x = keras.layers.Dense(64, activation="relu", name="dense_2")(x)
outputs = keras.layers.Dense(10, name="predictions")(x)
return keras.Model(inputs=inputs, outputs=outputs, name="3_layer_mlp")
functional_model = create_functional_model()
functional_model.save_weights("pretrained.weights.h5")
# In a separate program:
pretrained_model = create_functional_model()
pretrained_model.load_weights("pretrained.weights.h5")
# Create a new model by extracting layers from the original model:
extracted_layers = pretrained_model.layers[:-1]
extracted_layers.append(keras.layers.Dense(5, name="dense_3"))
model = keras.Sequential(extracted_layers)
model.summary()
Model: "sequential_4"
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ Layer (type) ┃ Output Shape ┃ Param # ┃ ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩ │ dense_1 (Dense) │ (None, 64) │ 50,240 │ ├─────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼────────────┤ │ dense_2 (Dense) │ (None, 64) │ 4,160 │ ├─────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼────────────┤ │ dense_3 (Dense) │ (None, 5) │ 325 │ └─────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴────────────┘
Total params: 54,725 (213.77 KB)
Trainable params: 54,725 (213.77 KB)
Non-trainable params: 0 (0.00 B)
Specifications:
get_config()
should return a JSON-serializable dictionary in order to be
compatible with the Keras architecture- and model-saving APIs.from_config(config)
(a classmethod
) should return a new layer or model
object that is created from the config.
The default implementation returns cls(**config)
.NOTE: If all your constructor arguments are already serializable, e.g. strings and
ints, or non-custom Keras objects, overriding from_config
is not necessary. However,
for more complex objects such as layers or models passed to __init__
, deserialization
must be handled explicitly either in __init__
itself or overriding the from_config()
method.
Example:
@keras.saving.register_keras_serializable(package="MyLayers", name="KernelMult")
class MyDense(keras.layers.Layer):
def __init__(
self,
units,
*,
kernel_regularizer=None,
kernel_initializer=None,
nested_model=None,
**kwargs
):
super().__init__(**kwargs)
self.hidden_units = units
self.kernel_regularizer = kernel_regularizer
self.kernel_initializer = kernel_initializer
self.nested_model = nested_model
def get_config(self):
config = super().get_config()
# Update the config with the custom layer's parameters
config.update(
{
"units": self.hidden_units,
"kernel_regularizer": self.kernel_regularizer,
"kernel_initializer": self.kernel_initializer,
"nested_model": self.nested_model,
}
)
return config
def build(self, input_shape):
input_units = input_shape[-1]
self.kernel = self.add_weight(
name="kernel",
shape=(input_units, self.hidden_units),
regularizer=self.kernel_regularizer,
initializer=self.kernel_initializer,
)
def call(self, inputs):
return ops.matmul(inputs, self.kernel)
layer = MyDense(units=16, kernel_regularizer="l1", kernel_initializer="ones")
layer3 = MyDense(units=64, nested_model=layer)
config = keras.layers.serialize(layer3)
print(config)
new_layer = keras.layers.deserialize(config)
print(new_layer)
{'module': None, 'class_name': 'MyDense', 'config': {'name': 'my_dense_1', 'trainable': True, 'dtype': 'float32', 'units': 64, 'kernel_regularizer': None, 'kernel_initializer': None, 'nested_model': {'module': None, 'class_name': 'MyDense', 'config': {'name': 'my_dense', 'trainable': True, 'dtype': 'float32', 'units': 16, 'kernel_regularizer': 'l1', 'kernel_initializer': 'ones', 'nested_model': None}, 'registered_name': 'MyLayers>KernelMult'}}, 'registered_name': 'MyLayers>KernelMult'}
<MyDense name=my_dense_1, built=False>
Note that overriding from_config
is unnecessary above for MyDense
because
hidden_units
, kernel_initializer
, and kernel_regularizer
are ints, strings, and a
built-in Keras object, respectively. This means that the default from_config
implementation of cls(**config)
will work as intended.
For more complex objects, such as layers and models passed to __init__
, for
example, you must explicitly deserialize these objects. Let's take a look at an example
of a model where a from_config
override is necessary.
@keras.saving.register_keras_serializable(package="ComplexModels")
class CustomModel(keras.layers.Layer):
def __init__(self, first_layer, second_layer=None, **kwargs):
super().__init__(**kwargs)
self.first_layer = first_layer
if second_layer is not None:
self.second_layer = second_layer
else:
self.second_layer = keras.layers.Dense(8)
def get_config(self):
config = super().get_config()
config.update(
{
"first_layer": self.first_layer,
"second_layer": self.second_layer,
}
)
return config
@classmethod
def from_config(cls, config):
# Note that you can also use [`keras.saving.deserialize_keras_object`](/api/models/model_saving_apis/serialization_utils#deserializekerasobject-function) here
config["first_layer"] = keras.layers.deserialize(config["first_layer"])
config["second_layer"] = keras.layers.deserialize(config["second_layer"])
return cls(**config)
def call(self, inputs):
return self.first_layer(self.second_layer(inputs))
# Let's make our first layer the custom layer from the previous example (MyDense)
inputs = keras.Input((32,))
outputs = CustomModel(first_layer=layer)(inputs)
model = keras.Model(inputs, outputs)
config = model.get_config()
new_model = keras.Model.from_config(config)
The serialization format has a special key for custom objects registered via
@keras.saving.register_keras_serializable
. This registered_name
key allows for easy
retrieval at loading/deserialization time while also allowing users to add custom naming.
Let's take a look at the config from serializing the custom layer MyDense
we defined
above.
Example:
layer = MyDense(
units=16,
kernel_regularizer=keras.regularizers.L1L2(l1=1e-5, l2=1e-4),
kernel_initializer="ones",
)
config = keras.layers.serialize(layer)
print(config)
{'module': None, 'class_name': 'MyDense', 'config': {'name': 'my_dense_2', 'trainable': True, 'dtype': 'float32', 'units': 16, 'kernel_regularizer': {'module': 'keras.src.regularizers.regularizers', 'class_name': 'L1L2', 'config': {'l1': 1e-05, 'l2': 0.0001}, 'registered_name': 'L1L2'}, 'kernel_initializer': 'ones', 'nested_model': None}, 'registered_name': 'MyLayers>KernelMult'}
As shown, the registered_name
key contains the lookup information for the Keras master
list, including the package MyLayers
and the custom name KernelMult
that we gave in
the @keras.saving.register_keras_serializable
decorator. Take a look again at the custom
class definition/registration here.
Note that the class_name
key contains the original name of the class, allowing for
proper re-initialization in from_config
.
Additionally, note that the module
key is None
since this is a custom object.