Path: blob/master/cloud/notebooks/python_sdk/converters/Use ONNX model converted from scikit-learn.ipynb
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Use ONNX model converted from scikit-learn with ibm-watsonx-ai
This notebook facilitates ONNX
, scikit-learn
, and watsonx.ai Runtime
service. It contains steps and code to work with ibm-watsonx-ai library available in PyPI repository in order to convert the model to ONNX format. It also introduces commands for persisting model, deploying model, and scoring it.
Some familiarity with Python is helpful. This notebook uses Python 3.11.
Learning goals
The learning goals of this notebook are:
Train a scikit-learn model
Convert the native scikit-learn model to ONNX format
[Optional] perform conversion for a custom scikit-learn model wrapped in a sklearn pipeline
Persist the converted model in the watsonx.ai Runtime repository
Deploy the model for online scoring using client library
Score sample records using the client library
Contents
This notebook contains the following parts:
1. Setting up the environment
Before you use the sample code in this notebook, you must perform the following setup tasks:
Create a watsonx.ai Runtime instance (information on service plans and further reading can be found here).
1.1. Installing and importing the ibm-watsonx-ai
and dependencies
Note: ibm-watsonx-ai
documentation can be found here.
1.2. Connecting to watsonx.ai Runtime
Authenticate with the watsonx.ai Runtime service on IBM Cloud. You need to provide platform api_key
and instance location
.
You can use IBM Cloud CLI to retrieve platform API Key and instance location.
API Key can be generated in the following way:
Get the value of api_key
from the output.
Location of your watsonx.ai Runtime instance can be retrieved in the following way:
Get the value of location
from the output.
Tip: You can generate your Cloud API key
by going to the Users section of the Cloud console. From that page, click your name, scroll down to the API Keys section, and click Create an IBM Cloud API key. Give your key a name and click Create, then copy the created key and paste it below. You can also get a service-specific url by going to the Endpoint URLs section of the watsonx.ai Runtime docs. You can check your instance location in your watsonx.ai Runtime Service instance details.
You can also get the service specific apikey by going to the Service IDs section of the Cloud Console. From that page, click Create, then copy the created key, and paste it below.
Action: Enter your api_key
and location
in the following cells.
If you are running this notebook on Cloud, you can access the location
via:
1.3. Working with spaces
First of all, you need to create a space that will be used for your work. If you do not have a space, you can use Deployment Spaces Dashboard to create one.
Click New Deployment Space
Create an empty space
Select Cloud Object Storage
Select watsonx.ai Runtime instance and press Create
Copy
space_id
and paste it below
Tip: You can also use the ibm_watsonx_ai
SDK to prepare the space for your work. More information can be found here.
Action: Assign space ID below
You can use the list
method to print all existing spaces.
To be able to interact with all resources available in watsonx.ai Runtime, you need to set space which you will be using.
Load the iris data first.
2.1. Creating an estimator
2.2. (OPTIONAL) Creating a pipeline with custom Transformer
To create a scikit-learn pipeline consisting of e.g. a custom standard scaler followed by an estimator, change the Markdown
cell below to a Code
cell and remove the triple backticks (```
).
2.3. Training the model
3.1. (OPTIONAL) Register custom converter
To convert a CUSTOM scikit learn model to an ONNX format you need to register a custom onnx converter. In order to do so for previously, optionally, defined custom standard scaler, change the Markdown
cell below to a Code
cell and remove the triple backticks (```). The example demonstrates an sklearn pipeline with custom transformer, but the steps would remain the same for a standalone custom model. For more information refer to the documentation.
3.2. Converting the model
Every classifier, by design, produces two outputs: the predicted label and the probability distribution across all possible labels. As you can see, the predicted values are consistent with those calculated in the evaluation section.
In this section, you will learn how to store your converted ONNX model in watsonx.ai Runtime.
4.1. Publishing the model in watsonx.ai Runtime repository
Define model name, type and software spec.
4.2. Getting model details
In this section you'll learn how to create an online scoring service and predict on unseen data.
5.1. Creating online deployment for published model
Now you can print an online scoring endpoint.
5.2. Getting deployment details
5.3. Scoring
You can use the method shown below to perform a test scoring request against the deployed model.
Prepare scoring payload with records to score.
Use client.deployments.score()
method to run scoring.
Let's print the result of predictions.
As you can see, the predicted values are consistent with those calculated in the evaluation section.
If you want to clean up after the notebook execution, i.e. remove any created assets like:
experiments
trainings
pipelines
model definitions
models
functions
deployments
please follow up this sample notebook.
You successfully completed this notebook! You learned how to use ONNX, scikit-learn machine learning library as well as watsonx.ai Runtime for model creation and deployment. Check out our Online Documentation for more samples, tutorials, documentation, how-tos, and blog posts.
Copyright © 2025 IBM. This notebook and its source code are released under the terms of the MIT License.