Generate: basic token streaming

docs/source/en/generation_strategies.mdx

@@ -139,6 +139,29 @@ one for summarization with beam search). You must have the right Hub permissions
 ['Les fichiers de configuration sont faciles à utiliser !']
 ```
 
+## Streaming
+
+The `generate()` supports streaming, through its `streamer` input. The `streamer` input is compatible any instance
+from a class that has the following methods: `put()` and `end()`. Internally, `put()` is used to push new tokens and
+`end()` is used to flag the end of text generation.
+
+In practice, you can craft your own streaming class for all sorts of purposes! We also have basic streaming classes
+ready for you to use. For example, you can use the [`TextStreamer`] class to stream the output of `generate()` into
+your screen, one word at a time:
+
+```python
+>>> from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, TextStreamer
+
+>>> tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("gpt2")
+>>> model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("gpt2")
+>>> inputs = tok(["An increasing sequence: one,"], return_tensors="pt")
+>>> streamer = TextStreamer(tok)
+
+>>> # Despite returning the usual output, the streamer will also print the generated text to stdout.
+>>> _ = model.generate(**inputs, streamer=streamer, max_new_tokens=20)
+An increasing sequence: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
+```
+
 ## Decoding strategies
 
 Certain combinations of the `generate()` parameters, and ultimately `generation_config`, can be used to enable specific

docs/source/en/internal/generation_utils.mdx

@@ -265,3 +265,7 @@ A [`Constraint`] can be used to force the generation to include specific tokens
 [[autodoc]] top_k_top_p_filtering
 
 [[autodoc]] tf_top_k_top_p_filtering
+
+## Streamers
+
+[[autodoc]] TextStreamer

docs/source/en/main_classes/text_generation.mdx

@@ -24,7 +24,8 @@ of the generation method.
 
 To learn how to inspect a model's generation configuration, what are the defaults, how to change the parameters ad hoc,
 and how to create and save a customized generation configuration, refer to the
-[text generation strategies guide](../generation_strategies).
+[text generation strategies guide](../generation_strategies). The guide also explains how to use related features,
+like token streaming.
 
 ## GenerationConfig
 

src/transformers/__init__.py

@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@
     "feature_extraction_sequence_utils": ["SequenceFeatureExtractor"],
     "feature_extraction_utils": ["BatchFeature", "FeatureExtractionMixin"],
     "file_utils": [],
-    "generation": ["GenerationConfig"],
+    "generation": ["GenerationConfig", "TextStreamer"],
     "hf_argparser": ["HfArgumentParser"],
     "image_transforms": [],
     "integrations": [
@@ -3769,7 +3769,7 @@
     from .feature_extraction_utils import BatchFeature, FeatureExtractionMixin
 
     # Generation
-    from .generation import GenerationConfig
+    from .generation import GenerationConfig, TextStreamer
     from .hf_argparser import HfArgumentParser
 
     # Integrations

src/transformers/generation/__init__.py

@@ -17,8 +17,7 @@
 from ..utils import OptionalDependencyNotAvailable, _LazyModule, is_flax_available, is_tf_available, is_torch_available
 
 
-_import_structure = {"configuration_utils": ["GenerationConfig"]}
-
+_import_structure = {"configuration_utils": ["GenerationConfig"], "streamers": ["TextStreamer"]}
 
 try:
     if not is_torch_available():
@@ -150,6 +149,7 @@
 
 if TYPE_CHECKING:
     from .configuration_utils import GenerationConfig
+    from .streamers import TextStreamer
 
     try:
         if not is_torch_available():

src/transformers/generation/streamers.py

@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
+# coding=utf-8
+# Copyright 2023 The HuggingFace Inc. team.
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# 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.
+
+from typing import TYPE_CHECKING
+
+
+if TYPE_CHECKING:
+    from ..models.auto import AutoTokenizer
+
+
+class BaseStreamer:
+    """
+    Base class from which `.generate()` streamers should inherit.
+    """
+
+    def put(self, value):
+        """Function that is called by `.generate()` to push new tokens"""
+        raise NotImplementedError()
+
+    def end(self):
+        """Function that is called by `.generate()` to signal the end of generation"""
+        raise NotImplementedError()
+
+
+class TextStreamer(BaseStreamer):
+    """
+    Simple text streamer that prints the token(s) to stdout as soon as entire words are formed.
+
+    Parameters:
+        tokenizer (`AutoTokenizer`):
+            The tokenized used to decode the tokens.
+
+    Examples:
+
+        ```python
+        >>> from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer, TextStreamer
+
+        >>> tok = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("gpt2")
+        >>> model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("gpt2")
+        >>> inputs = tok(["An increasing sequence: one,"], return_tensors="pt")
+        >>> streamer = TextStreamer(tok)
+
+        >>> # Despite returning the usual output, the streamer will also print the generated text to stdout.
+        >>> _ = model.generate(**inputs, streamer=streamer, max_new_tokens=20)
+        An increasing sequence: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
+        ```
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, tokenizer: "AutoTokenizer"):
+        self.tokenizer = tokenizer
+        self.token_cache = []
+        self.print_len = 0
+
+    def put(self, value):
+        """
+        Recives tokens, decodes them, and prints them to stdout as soon as they form entire words.
+        """
+        if len(value.shape) > 1 and value.shape[0] > 1:
+            raise ValueError("TextStreamer only supports batch size 1")
+        elif len(value.shape) > 1:
+            value = value[0]
+
+        # Add the new token to the cache and decodes the entire thing.
+        self.token_cache.extend(value.tolist())
+        text = self.tokenizer.decode(self.token_cache)
+
+        # After symbol for a new line, we flush the cache.
+        if text.endswith("\n"):
+            printable_text = text[self.print_len :]
+            self.token_cache = []
+            self.print_len = 0
+        # Otherwise, prints until the last space char (simple heuristic to avoid printing incomplete words,
+        # which may change with the subsequent token -- there are probably smarter ways to do this!)
+        else:
+            printable_text = text[self.print_len : text.rfind(" ") + 1]
+            self.print_len += len(printable_text)
+
+        print(printable_text, flush=True, end="")
+
+    def end(self):
+        """Flushes any remaining cache and prints a newline to stdout."""
+        # Flush the cache, if it exists
+        if len(self.token_cache) > 0:
+            text = self.tokenizer.decode(self.token_cache)
+            printable_text = text[self.print_len :]
+            self.token_cache = []
+            self.print_len = 0
+        else:
+            printable_text = ""
+
+        # Print a newline (and the remaining text, if any)
+        print(printable_text, flush=True)

src/transformers/generation/utils.py

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
 import inspect
 import warnings
 from dataclasses import dataclass
-from typing import Any, Callable, Dict, List, Optional, Tuple, Union
+from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Any, Callable, Dict, List, Optional, Tuple, Union
 
 import torch
 import torch.distributed as dist
@@ -72,6 +72,10 @@
 )
 
 
+if TYPE_CHECKING:
+    from .streamers import BaseStreamer
+
+
 logger = logging.get_logger(__name__)
 
 
@@ -1116,6 +1120,7 @@ def generate(
         stopping_criteria: Optional[StoppingCriteriaList] = None,
         prefix_allowed_tokens_fn: Optional[Callable[[int, torch.Tensor], List[int]]] = None,
         synced_gpus: Optional[bool] = None,
+        streamer: Optional["BaseStreamer"] = None,
         **kwargs,
     ) -> Union[GenerateOutput, torch.LongTensor]:
         r"""
@@ -1165,6 +1170,9 @@ def generate(
                 Whether to continue running the while loop until max_length. Unless overridden this flag will be set to
                 `True` under DeepSpeed ZeRO Stage 3 multiple GPUs environment to avoid hanging if one GPU finished
                 generating before other GPUs. Otherwise it'll be set to `False`.
+            streamer (`BaseStreamer`, *optional*):
+                Streamer object that will be used to stream the generated sequences. Generated tokens are passed
+                through `streamer.put(token_ids)` and the streamer is responsible for any further processing.
 
             kwargs:
                 Ad hoc parametrization of `generate_config` and/or additional model-specific kwargs that will be
@@ -1291,6 +1299,9 @@ def generate(
         else:
             input_ids = inputs_tensor if model_input_name == "input_ids" else model_kwargs.pop("input_ids")
 
+        if streamer is not None:
+            streamer.put(input_ids.cpu())
+
         # 6. Prepare `max_length` depending on other stopping criteria.
         input_ids_seq_length = input_ids.shape[-1]
         has_default_max_length = kwargs.get("max_length") is None and generation_config.max_length is not None
@@ -1331,7 +1342,8 @@ def generate(
         )
 
         is_contrastive_search_gen_mode = (
-            generation_config.top_k is not None
+            (generation_config.num_beams == 1)
+            and generation_config.top_k is not None
             and generation_config.top_k > 1
             and generation_config.do_sample is False
             and generation_config.penalty_alpha is not None
@@ -1380,6 +1392,11 @@ def generate(
                 "Diverse beam search cannot be used in sampling mode. Make sure that `do_sample` is set to `False`."
             )
 
+        if streamer is not None and (generation_config.num_beams > 1):
+            raise ValueError(
+                "`streamer` cannot be used with beam search (yet!). Make sure that `num_beams` is set to 1."
+            )
+
         if self.device.type != input_ids.device.type:
             warnings.warn(
                 "You are calling .generate() with the `input_ids` being on a device type different"
@@ -1422,6 +1439,7 @@ def generate(
                 output_scores=generation_config.output_scores,
                 return_dict_in_generate=generation_config.return_dict_in_generate,
                 synced_gpus=synced_gpus,
+                streamer=streamer,
                 **model_kwargs,
             )
 
@@ -1443,6 +1461,7 @@ def generate(
                 output_scores=generation_config.output_scores,
                 return_dict_in_generate=generation_config.return_dict_in_generate,
                 synced_gpus=synced_gpus,
+                streamer=streamer,
                 **model_kwargs,
             )
 
@@ -1469,6 +1488,7 @@ def generate(
                 output_scores=generation_config.output_scores,
                 return_dict_in_generate=generation_config.return_dict_in_generate,
                 synced_gpus=synced_gpus,
+                streamer=streamer,
                 **model_kwargs,
             )
 
@@ -1699,6 +1719,7 @@ def contrastive_search(
         output_scores: Optional[bool] = None,
         return_dict_in_generate: Optional[bool] = None,
         synced_gpus: Optional[bool] = False,
+        streamer: Optional["BaseStreamer"] = None,
         **model_kwargs,
     ) -> Union[ContrastiveSearchOutput, torch.LongTensor]:
         r"""
@@ -1746,6 +1767,9 @@ def contrastive_search(
                 Whether or not to return a [`~utils.ModelOutput`] instead of a plain tuple.
             synced_gpus (`bool`, *optional*, defaults to `False`):
                 Whether to continue running the while loop until max_length (needed for ZeRO stage 3)
+            streamer (`BaseStreamer`, *optional*):
+                Streamer object that will be used to stream the generated sequences. Generated tokens are passed
+                through `streamer.put(token_ids)` and the streamer is responsible for any further processing.
             model_kwargs:
                 Additional model specific keyword arguments will be forwarded to the `forward` function of the model.
                 If model is an encoder-decoder model the kwargs should include `encoder_outputs`.
@@ -2006,6 +2030,8 @@ def contrastive_search(
 
             # update generated ids, model inputs, and length for next step
             input_ids = torch.cat([input_ids, next_tokens[:, None]], dim=-1)
+            if streamer is not None:
+                streamer.put(next_tokens.cpu())
             model_kwargs = self._update_model_kwargs_for_generation(
                 outputs, model_kwargs, is_encoder_decoder=self.config.is_encoder_decoder
             )
@@ -2023,6 +2049,9 @@ def contrastive_search(
                 else:
                     this_peer_finished = True
 
+        if streamer is not None:
+            streamer.end()
+
         if return_dict_in_generate:
             if self.config.is_encoder_decoder:
                 return ContrastiveSearchEncoderDecoderOutput(
@@ -2057,6 +2086,7 @@ def greedy_search(
         output_scores: Optional[bool] = None,
         return_dict_in_generate: Optional[bool] = None,
         synced_gpus: Optional[bool] = False,
+        streamer: Optional["BaseStreamer"] = None,
         **model_kwargs,
     ) -> Union[GreedySearchOutput, torch.LongTensor]:
         r"""
@@ -2101,6 +2131,9 @@ def greedy_search(
                 Whether or not to return a [`~utils.ModelOutput`] instead of a plain tuple.
             synced_gpus (`bool`, *optional*, defaults to `False`):
                 Whether to continue running the while loop until max_length (needed for ZeRO stage 3)
+            streamer (`BaseStreamer`, *optional*):
+                Streamer object that will be used to stream the generated sequences. Generated tokens are passed
+                through `streamer.put(token_ids)` and the streamer is responsible for any further processing.
             model_kwargs:
                 Additional model specific keyword arguments will be forwarded to the `forward` function of the model.
                 If model is an encoder-decoder model the kwargs should include `encoder_outputs`.
@@ -2252,6 +2285,8 @@ def greedy_search(
 
             # update generated ids, model inputs, and length for next step
             input_ids = torch.cat([input_ids, next_tokens[:, None]], dim=-1)
+            if streamer is not None:
+                streamer.put(next_tokens.cpu())
             model_kwargs = self._update_model_kwargs_for_generation(
                 outputs, model_kwargs, is_encoder_decoder=self.config.is_encoder_decoder
             )
@@ -2269,6 +2304,9 @@ def greedy_search(
                 else:
                     this_peer_finished = True
 
+        if streamer is not None:
+            streamer.end()
+
         if return_dict_in_generate:
             if self.config.is_encoder_decoder:
                 return GreedySearchEncoderDecoderOutput(
@@ -2304,6 +2342,7 @@ def sample(
         output_scores: Optional[bool] = None,
         return_dict_in_generate: Optional[bool] = None,
         synced_gpus: Optional[bool] = False,
+        streamer: Optional["BaseStreamer"] = None,
         **model_kwargs,
     ) -> Union[SampleOutput, torch.LongTensor]:
         r"""
@@ -2350,6 +2389,9 @@ def sample(
                 Whether or not to return a [`~utils.ModelOutput`] instead of a plain tuple.
             synced_gpus (`bool`, *optional*, defaults to `False`):
                 Whether to continue running the while loop until max_length (needed for ZeRO stage 3)
+            streamer (`BaseStreamer`, *optional*):
+                Streamer object that will be used to stream the generated sequences. Generated tokens are passed
+                through `streamer.put(token_ids)` and the streamer is responsible for any further processing.
             model_kwargs:
                 Additional model specific kwargs will be forwarded to the `forward` function of the model. If model is
                 an encoder-decoder model the kwargs should include `encoder_outputs`.
@@ -2521,6 +2563,8 @@ def sample(
 
             # update generated ids, model inputs, and length for next step
             input_ids = torch.cat([input_ids, next_tokens[:, None]], dim=-1)
+            if streamer is not None:
+                streamer.put(next_tokens.cpu())
             model_kwargs = self._update_model_kwargs_for_generation(
                 outputs, model_kwargs, is_encoder_decoder=self.config.is_encoder_decoder
             )
@@ -2538,6 +2582,9 @@ def sample(
                 else:
                     this_peer_finished = True
 
+        if streamer is not None:
+            streamer.end()
+
         if return_dict_in_generate:
             if self.config.is_encoder_decoder:
                 return SampleEncoderDecoderOutput(