Documentation about loading a fast tokenizer within Transformers (#11029)

* Documentation about loading a fast tokenizer within Transformers

* Apply suggestions from code review

Co-authored-by: Sylvain Gugger <35901082+sgugger@users.noreply.github.com>

* style

Co-authored-by: Sylvain Gugger <35901082+sgugger@users.noreply.github.com>

docs/source/fast_tokenizers.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+Using tokenizers from 🤗 Tokenizers
+=======================================================================================================================
+
+The :class:`~transformers.PreTrainedTokenizerFast` depends on the `tokenizers
+<https://huggingface.co/docs/tokenizers>`__ library. The tokenizers obtained from the 🤗 Tokenizers library can be
+loaded very simply into 🤗 Transformers.
+
+Before getting in the specifics, let's first start by creating a dummy tokenizer in a few lines:
+
+.. code-block::
+
+    >>> from tokenizers import Tokenizer
+    >>> from tokenizers.models import BPE
+    >>> from tokenizers.trainers import BpeTrainer
+    >>> from tokenizers.pre_tokenizers import Whitespace
+
+    >>> tokenizer = Tokenizer(BPE(unk_token="[UNK]"))
+    >>> trainer = BpeTrainer(special_tokens=["[UNK]", "[CLS]", "[SEP]", "[PAD]", "[MASK]"])
+
+    >>> tokenizer.pre_tokenizer = Whitespace()
+    >>> files = [...]
+    >>> tokenizer.train(files, trainer)
+
+We now have a tokenizer trained on the files we defined. We can either continue using it in that runtime, or save it to
+a JSON file for future re-use.
+
+Loading directly from the tokenizer object
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Let's see how to leverage this tokenizer object in the 🤗 Transformers library. The
+:class:`~transformers.PreTrainedTokenizerFast` class allows for easy instantiation, by accepting the instantiated
+`tokenizer` object as an argument:
+
+.. code-block::
+
+    >>> from transformers import PreTrainedTokenizerFast
+
+    >>> fast_tokenizer = PreTrainedTokenizerFast(tokenizer_object=tokenizer)
+
+This object can now be used with all the methods shared by the 🤗 Transformers tokenizers! Head to :doc:`the tokenizer
+page <main_classes/tokenizer>` for more information.
+
+Loading from a JSON file
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+In order to load a tokenizer from a JSON file, let's first start by saving our tokenizer:
+
+.. code-block::
+
+    >>> tokenizer.save("tokenizer.json")
+
+The path to which we saved this file can be passed to the :class:`~transformers.PreTrainedTokenizerFast` initialization
+method using the :obj:`tokenizer_file` parameter:
+
+.. code-block::
+
+    >>> from transformers import PreTrainedTokenizerFast
+
+    >>> fast_tokenizer = PreTrainedTokenizerFast(tokenizer_file="tokenizer.json")
+
+This object can now be used with all the methods shared by the 🤗 Transformers tokenizers! Head to :doc:`the tokenizer
+page <main_classes/tokenizer>` for more information.

docs/source/index.rst

@@ -384,6 +384,7 @@ TensorFlow and/or Flax.
     migration
     contributing
     add_new_model
+    fast_tokenizers
     testing
     serialization
 

docs/source/main_classes/tokenizer.rst

@@ -62,6 +62,11 @@ PreTrainedTokenizer
 PreTrainedTokenizerFast
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
+The :class:`~transformers.PreTrainedTokenizerFast` depend on the `tokenizers
+<https://huggingface.co/docs/tokenizers>`__ library. The tokenizers obtained from the 🤗 tokenizers library can be
+loaded very simply into 🤗 transformers. Take a look at the :doc:`Using tokenizers from 🤗 tokenizers
+<../fast_tokenizers>` page to understand how this is done.
+
 .. autoclass:: transformers.PreTrainedTokenizerFast
     :special-members: __call__
     :members: batch_decode, convert_ids_to_tokens, convert_tokens_to_ids, convert_tokens_to_string, decode, encode, 

src/transformers/tokenization_utils_fast.py

@@ -54,6 +54,12 @@ TOKENIZER_CONFIG_FILE = "tokenizer_config.json"
 # Slow tokenizers have an additional added tokens files
 ADDED_TOKENS_FILE = "added_tokens.json"
 
+INIT_TOKENIZER_DOCSTRING += """
+        tokenizer_object (:class:`tokenizers.Tokenizer`):
+            A :class:`tokenizers.Tokenizer` object from 🤗 tokenizers to instantiate from. See :doc:`Using tokenizers
+            from 🤗 tokenizers <../fast_tokenizers>` for more information.
+"""
+
 
 @add_end_docstrings(INIT_TOKENIZER_DOCSTRING)
 class PreTrainedTokenizerFast(PreTrainedTokenizerBase):
@@ -72,6 +78,7 @@ class PreTrainedTokenizerFast(PreTrainedTokenizerBase):
     slow_tokenizer_class: PreTrainedTokenizer = None
 
     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
+        tokenizer_object = kwargs.pop("tokenizer_object", None)
         slow_tokenizer = kwargs.pop("__slow_tokenizer", None)
         fast_tokenizer_file = kwargs.pop("tokenizer_file", None)
         from_slow = kwargs.pop("from_slow", False)
@@ -82,7 +89,9 @@ class PreTrainedTokenizerFast(PreTrainedTokenizerBase):
                 "have sentencepiece installed."
             )
 
-        if fast_tokenizer_file is not None and not from_slow:
+        if tokenizer_object is not None:
+            fast_tokenizer = tokenizer_object
+        elif fast_tokenizer_file is not None and not from_slow:
             # We have a serialization from tokenizers which let us directly build the backend
             fast_tokenizer = TokenizerFast.from_file(fast_tokenizer_file)
         elif slow_tokenizer is not None:
@@ -94,10 +103,10 @@ class PreTrainedTokenizerFast(PreTrainedTokenizerBase):
             fast_tokenizer = convert_slow_tokenizer(slow_tokenizer)
         else:
             raise ValueError(
-                "Couldn't instantiate the backend tokenizer from one of: "
+                "Couldn't instantiate the backend tokenizer from one of: \n"
-                "(1) a `tokenizers` library serialization file, "
+                "(1) a `tokenizers` library serialization file, \n"
-                "(2) a slow tokenizer instance to convert or "
+                "(2) a slow tokenizer instance to convert or \n"
-                "(3) an equivalent slow tokenizer class to instantiate and convert. "
+                "(3) an equivalent slow tokenizer class to instantiate and convert. \n"
                 "You need to have sentencepiece installed to convert a slow tokenizer to a fast one."
             )
 

tests/test_tokenization_utils.py

@@ -12,18 +12,33 @@
 # WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
-
+import os
 import pickle
+import tempfile
 import unittest
 from typing import Callable, Optional
 
 import numpy as np
 
-from transformers import BatchEncoding, BertTokenizer, BertTokenizerFast, PreTrainedTokenizer, TensorType, TokenSpan
+from transformers import (
+    BatchEncoding,
+    BertTokenizer,
+    BertTokenizerFast,
+    PreTrainedTokenizer,
+    PreTrainedTokenizerFast,
+    TensorType,
+    TokenSpan,
+    is_tokenizers_available,
+)
 from transformers.models.gpt2.tokenization_gpt2 import GPT2Tokenizer
 from transformers.testing_utils import CaptureStderr, require_flax, require_tf, require_tokenizers, require_torch, slow
 
 
+if is_tokenizers_available():
+    from tokenizers import Tokenizer
+    from tokenizers.models import WordPiece
+
+
 class TokenizerUtilsTest(unittest.TestCase):
     def check_tokenizer_from_pretrained(self, tokenizer_class):
         s3_models = list(tokenizer_class.max_model_input_sizes.keys())
@@ -253,3 +268,15 @@ class TokenizerUtilsTest(unittest.TestCase):
         batch = tokenizer.pad(features, padding=True, return_tensors="tf")
         self.assertTrue(isinstance(batch["input_ids"], tf.Tensor))
         self.assertEqual(batch["input_ids"].numpy().tolist(), [[0, 1, 2, tokenizer.pad_token_id], [0, 1, 2, 3]])
+
+    @require_tokenizers
+    def test_instantiation_from_tokenizers(self):
+        bert_tokenizer = Tokenizer(WordPiece(unk_token="[UNK]"))
+        PreTrainedTokenizerFast(tokenizer_object=bert_tokenizer)
+
+    @require_tokenizers
+    def test_instantiation_from_tokenizers_json_file(self):
+        bert_tokenizer = Tokenizer(WordPiece(unk_token="[UNK]"))
+        with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmpdirname:
+            bert_tokenizer.save(os.path.join(tmpdirname, "tokenizer.json"))
+            PreTrainedTokenizerFast(tokenizer_file=os.path.join(tmpdirname, "tokenizer.json"))