#MLNET – How to use the AutoML API in a Console App

Hi !

In my last posts I was testing AutoML using the Model Builder inside Visual Studio and also the CLI commands. There is also an API to use this in a .Net app, and the usage is very simple.

It all start, of course, adding the [Microsoft.ML.AutoML] nuget package

I read the documentation in [How to use the ML.NET automated machine learning API], and I created the following sample using the same data as in my previous posts.

	private const uint ExperimentTime = 180;
	static void Main(string[] args)
	{
	var mlContext = new MLContext();
	Train(mlContext);
	Console.WriteLine("Process complete! Press any key to close the app.");
	Console.ReadKey();
	}
	public static void Train(MLContext mlContext)
	{
	try
	{
	// STEP 1: Load the data
	var trainData = mlContext.Data.LoadFromTextFile(path: "AgeRangeData03_AgeGenderLabelEncodedMoreData.csv",
	columns: new[]
	{
	new TextLoader.Column("Age", DataKind.Single, 0),
	new TextLoader.Column("Gender", DataKind.Single, 1)
	,
	new TextLoader.Column("Label", DataKind.Single, 2)
	},
	hasHeader: true,
	separatorChar: ','
	);
	var progressHandler = new MulticlassExperimentProgressHandler();
	ConsoleHelper.ConsoleWriteHeader("=============== Running AutoML experiment ===============");
	Console.WriteLine($"Running AutoML multiclass classification experiment for {ExperimentTime} seconds…");
	ExperimentResult<MulticlassClassificationMetrics> experimentResult = mlContext.Auto()
	.CreateMulticlassClassificationExperiment(ExperimentTime)
	.Execute(trainData, "Label", progressHandler: progressHandler);
	// Print top models found by AutoML
	Console.WriteLine();
	PrintTopModels(experimentResult);
	Console.WriteLine();
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
	Console.WriteLine(ex);
	}
	}

view raw MLNetAutoMLAPIConsole.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The final result displays the results for each one of the tests and showcase the top 3 ranked models. This time LightGBM Trainer is one more time the best trainer to choose.

There is a full set of samples in the Machine Learning .Net Samples repository. I’ve reused some classes from the Common folder.

The complete source code is available https://github.com/elbruno/Blog/tree/master/20190516%20MLNET%20AutoML%20API

Happy Coding!

Greetings @ Toronto

El Bruno

References

• How to use the ML.NET automated machine learning API
• Auto generate a binary classifier using the CLI
• Machine Learning Model Builder
• How to install the ML.NET Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool
• Machine Learning .Net Samples