index.rst

TFTS: TensorFlow Time Series

GitHub

Welcome to TFTS (TensorFlow Time Series), a Python library for state-of-the-art deep learning time series analysis. TFTS provides production-ready implementations of cutting-edge models for forecasting, classification, and anomaly detection tasks.

Why TFTS?

TFTS simplifies time series modeling by providing:

State-of-the-Art Models

Access to 20+ pre-implemented deep learning architectures including Transformers, BERT, Informer, Autoformer, and more. All models are optimized for time series tasks and ready for production use.

Unified API

Consistent interface across all models through AutoModel and AutoConfig. Switch between architectures with a single line of code while maintaining the same workflow.

Production Ready

Built on TensorFlow 2.x with native support for distributed training, mixed precision, TPUs, and TensorFlow Serving. Export models to SavedModel or ONNX formats for deployment.

Flexible Architecture

Modular design allows easy customization of model components, training loops, and data pipelines. Integrate TFTS models as backbones in your custom architectures.

Comprehensive Tasks

Support for forecasting (univariate/multivariate), classification, anomaly detection, and segmentation tasks with task-specific model heads.

Key Features

📈 Multiple Tasks

• Single/multi-step forecasting
• Probabilistic forecasting with uncertainty quantification
• Time series classification
• Anomaly detection
• Change point detection and segmentation

🚀 20+ Models

• Classic: RNN, LSTM, GRU, Seq2Seq
• CNN-based: TCN, WaveNet, UNet
• Transformer-based: Transformer, BERT, Informer, Autoformer, PatchTST, iTransformer
• Specialized: N-BEATS, DLinear, TFT, DeepAR, RWKV, Diffusion

⚡ Performance

• Multi-GPU training with tf.distribute
• TPU support for large-scale training
• Mixed precision training (FP16/BF16)
• TensorFlow data pipelines for efficient I/O

🔧 Flexible

• Modular layer design for custom architectures
• Feature engineering utilities (lag features, rolling statistics, datetime features)
• Custom training loops and callbacks
• Integration with Keras ecosystem

Quick Start

Installation

Install TFTS using pip:

pip install tfts

Requirements:

• Python >= 3.7
• TensorFlow >= 2.4

For development installation:

git clone https://github.com/LongxingTan/Time-series-prediction.git
cd Time-series-prediction
pip install -e .

Basic Usage

Here's a minimal example to get started with TFTS:

import tensorflow as tf
import tfts
from tfts import AutoConfig, AutoModel, KerasTrainer

# 1. Load sample data
train_length = 24
predict_length = 8
train, valid = tfts.get_data('sine', train_length, predict_length)

# 2. Choose and configure a model
config = AutoConfig.for_model('transformer')
model = AutoModel.from_config(config, predict_sequence_length=predict_length)

# 3. Train the model
trainer = KerasTrainer(model)
trainer.train(train, valid, epochs=10)

# 4. Make predictions
predictions = trainer.predict(valid[0])

Supported Models

TFTS provides implementations of state-of-the-art time series models:

Transformer-Based Models

• transformer: Standard Transformer architecture adapted for time series
• bert: BERT-style bidirectional encoder for representation learning
• informer: ProbSparse self-attention for long sequence forecasting
• autoformer: Auto-correlation mechanism for decomposition
• tft: Temporal Fusion Transformer with interpretable attention
• patch_tst: Patch-based Transformer for efficient training
• itransformer: Inverted Transformer treating variates as tokens

RNN-Based Models

• rnn: Configurable RNN with LSTM/GRU cells
• seq2seq: Encoder-decoder architecture with attention
• deep_ar: Probabilistic forecasting with autoregressive RNN

CNN-Based Models

• tcn: Temporal Convolutional Network with dilated convolutions
• wavenet: WaveNet-style architecture with causal convolutions
• unet: U-Net style encoder-decoder for sequence-to-sequence

Specialized Models

• nbeats: Neural Basis Expansion Analysis for interpretable forecasting
• dlinear: Simple linear model with decomposition
• rwkv: RWKV architecture with linear attention
• diffusion: Diffusion-based probabilistic forecasting
• tide: Time-series Dense Encoder
• gpt: GPT-style autoregressive model

User Guide

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: Getting Started

   installation
   tutorials

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: User Guide

   models
   training

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: Advanced Topics

   feature_engineering
   tricks

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: API Reference

   api

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :caption: Additional Information

   examples
   faq

Examples

Real-World Applications

TFTS has been successfully used in production and competitions:

Competition Wins

• 🥉 3rd Place - Baidu KDD Cup 2022 (Code)
• 🎯 4th Place - Alibaba Tianchi ENSO Prediction (Code)

Industry Use Cases

• Energy demand forecasting
• Financial time series prediction
• IoT sensor data analysis
• Weather and climate modeling
• Traffic flow prediction

Advanced Examples

Multi-variate Forecasting

import tensorflow as tf
from tfts import AutoConfig, AutoModel

# Configure for multi-variate input
config = AutoConfig.for_model('informer')
config.num_features = 10  # 10 input features

model = AutoModel.from_config(config, predict_sequence_length=24)

# Input: (batch, sequence_length, num_features)
x = tf.random.normal([32, 96, 10])
predictions = model(x)  # Output: (32, 24, 1)

Probabilistic Forecasting

from tfts import AutoConfig, AutoModel

# Use model with uncertainty quantification
config = AutoConfig.for_model('deep_ar')
model = AutoModel.from_config(config, predict_sequence_length=24)

# Get probabilistic predictions
predictions = model(x)  # Returns distribution parameters

Custom Feature Engineering

from tfts.data import TimeSeriesSequence
import pandas as pd

# Configure feature engineering
feature_config = {
    'datetime': {
        'type': 'datetime',
        'features': ['hour', 'dayofweek', 'month'],
        'time_col': 'timestamp'
    },
    'lags': {
        'type': 'lag',
        'columns': 'target',
        'lags': [1, 2, 3, 7, 14]
    },
    'rolling': {
        'type': 'rolling',
        'columns': 'target',
        'windows': [7, 14],
        'functions': ['mean', 'std']
    }
}

# Create data loader with automatic feature engineering
data_loader = TimeSeriesSequence(
    data=df,
    time_idx='timestamp',
    target_column='target',
    train_sequence_length=24,
    predict_sequence_length=8,
    feature_config=feature_config
)

Community and Support

Getting Help

• 📖 Read the documentation
• 💬 Ask questions in GitHub Discussions
• 🐛 Report bugs in GitHub Issues

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See our Contributing Guide for details.

Citation

If you use TFTS in your research, please cite:

@misc{tfts2020,
  author = {Longxing Tan},
  title = {TFTS: TensorFlow Time Series},
  year = {2020},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  journal = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/longxingtan/time-series-prediction}},
}

License

TFTS is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.