carImageSearch

An MVC-patterned Python application which works on vectorized image data written to DataStax Astra DB. The application uses the Flask library to build a small front end to allow for searching on the image file data. It ultimately uses the astrapy library to access and work with the underlying vector embeddings in Astra DB.

A running version of this repository's application can be found at: https://aploetz68.pythonanywhere.com/

Requirements

A vector-enabled Astra DB database
An Astra DB application token
An Astra DB API endpoint
Environment variables defined for: FLASK_ENV, FLASK_APP, ASTRA_DB_APPLICATION_TOKEN, and ASTRA_DB_API_ENDPOINT:

export ASTRA_DB_APPLICATION_TOKEN=AstraCS:GgsdfSnotrealHqKZw:SDGSDDSG6a36d8526BLAHBLAHBLAHc18d40
export ASTRA_DB_API_ENDPOINT=https://b9aff773-also-not-real-d3088ea14425-us-east1.apps.astra.datastax.com
export FLASK_ENV=development
export FLASK_APP=carSearch

You can use a .env file for the vars as well.

A local static/images/ directory containing JPEGs or PNGs to embed.
A local static/input_images/ upload directory for JPEGs or PNGs to search by.
Python dependencies: sentence-transformers, astrapy, flask and flask_wtf. These are found in the requirements.txt file, and can quickly be installed with the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Functionality

Descriptions and examples for each Python file in the project.

carImageLoader.py

Creates a new collection named car_images using astrapy.
Cycles through all files in the static/images/ directory.
Generates embeddings for each image file.
Stores vector embeddings and metadata in Astra DB.

Note that most of the images in this repo are from the Car Images Dataset found on Kaggle.

Usage:

python3 carImageLoader.py

carSearch.py

Builds a small web frontend for the application (View).
Acts as the main program for the application

Usage:

flask run -p 8000

Terminal output:

 * Serving Flask app 'carSearch'
 * Debug mode: off
WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment. Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000
Press CTRL+C to quit

If you navigate in your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000, you may search in one of two ways:

By text string
By image (click on the "Search" button after selecting the image)

config.py

Helps configure the environment for Flask.

webforms.py

A logical way to separate the web forms definitions from the main code.
Contains the SearchForm.

carServices.py

Serves the get_car_by_text method (Controller).
Handles all interactions with the clip-ViT-B-32 sentence transformer.

astraConn.py

Handles the connectivity with Astra DB (Model).
Interacts with the vector data using astrapy.

ersantosnet / carImageSearch