Using download_data() and untar_data() in fastai library

Question

I downloaded Fashion MNIST dataset from kaggle using dowload_data() function in fastai library.

downloaded_data = download_data("https://www.kaggle.com/zalando-research/fashionmnist/download")

output -

PosixPath('/root/.fastai/data/download.tgz')

download_data saves it as .tgz file, now I use untar_data().

path = untar_data('/root/.fastai/data/download.tgz')

output -

PosixPath('/root/.fastai/data/download.tgz')

Which did not extract .tgz file. How do I use this dataset in fastai library?

Answer 1

In fastai library, the download_data gives you a pathlib.PosixPath file, not the exact file, you need to use another unzipping library to extract the data.

If you just need the MNIST data from fast ai, here's an easier way:

from fastai import datasets
import gzip, pickle
MNIST_URL='http://deeplearning.net/data/mnist/mnist.pkl'
path = datasets.download_data(MNIST_URL, ext='.gz')
with gzip.open(path, 'rb') as f:
    ((x_train, y_train), (x_valid, y_valid), _) = pickle.load(f, encoding='latin-1')