.. _l-serialization:

Serialization
=============

.. contents::
    :local:

Save a model and any Proto class
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This ONNX graph needs to be serialized into one contiguous
memory buffer. Method `SerializeToString` is available
in every ONNX objects.

::

    with open("model.onnx", "wb") as f:
        f.write(onnx_model.SerializeToString())

This method has the following signature.

.. autoclass:: onnx.ModelProto
    :members: SerializeToString

Every Proto class implements method `SerializeToString`.
Therefore the following code works with any class described
in page :ref:`l-onnx-classes`.

::

    with open("proto.pb", "wb") as f:
        f.write(proto.SerializeToString())

Next example shows how to save a :ref:`l-nodeproto`.

.. runpython::
    :showcode:

    from onnx import NodeProto

    node = NodeProto()
    node.name = "example-type-proto"
    node.op_type = "Add"
    node.input.extend(["X", "Y"])
    node.output.extend(["Z"])

    with open("node.pb", "wb") as f:
        f.write(node.SerializeToString())

Load a model
++++++++++++

Following function only automates the loading of a class
:ref:`l-modelproto`. Next sections shows how to restore
any other proto class.

.. autofunction:: onnx.load

::

    from onnx import load

    onnx_model = load("model.onnx")

Or:

::

    from onnx import load

    with open("model.onnx", "rb") as f:
        onnx_model = load(f)

Next function does the same from a bytes array.

.. autofunction:: onnx.load_model_from_string

.. _l-onnx-load-data:

Load a Proto
++++++++++++

Proto means here any type containing data including a model, a tensor,
a sparse tensor, any class listed in page :ref:`l-onnx-classes`.
The user must know the type of the data he needs to restore
and then call method `ParseFromString`.
:epkg:`protobuf` does not store any information about the class
of the saved data. Therefore, this class must be known before
restoring an object.

.. autoclass:: onnx.ModelProto
    :members: ParseFromString

Next example shows how to restore a :ref:`l-nodeproto`.

.. runpython::
    :showcode:

    from onnx import NodeProto

    tp2 = NodeProto()
    with open("node.pb", "rb") as f:
        content = f.read()

    tp2.ParseFromString(content)

    print(tp2)

A shortcut exists for :ref:`l-tensorproto`:

.. autofunction:: onnx.load_tensor_from_string

Performance
+++++++++++

.. toctree::

    ../../gyexamples/plot_benchmark_onnx_serialize