This is a simple implementation of dockerized face-detection restful-API implemented with flask, Nginx, and scaled up with Gunicorn. This web service takes in an image and returns face-box coordinates.

1. For face-detection, I used pytorch version of mtcnn from deep_utils library. For more information check out deep_utils.
2. The service is scaled up using gunicorn. The gunicorn is a simple library with high throughput for scaling python services.
   1. To increase the number workers, increase number of workers in the docker-compose.yml file.
   2. For more information about gunicorn workers and threads check the following stackoverflow question
   3. gunicorn-workers-and-threads
3. nginx is used as a reverse proxy

1. The face-detection name in docker-compose can be changed to any of the models available by deep-utils library.
2. For simplicity, I placed the weights of the mtcnn-torch model in app/weights.
3. To use different face-detection models in deep_utils, apply the following changes:
   1. Change the value of FACE_DETECTION_MODEL in the docker-compose.yml file.
   2. Modify configs of a new model in app/base_app.py file.
   3. It's recommended to run the new model in your local system and acquire the downloaded weights from ~/.deep_utils directory and place it inside app/weights directory. This will save you tons of time while working with models with heavy weights.
   4. If your new model is based on tensorflow, comment the pytorch installation section in app/Dockerfile and uncomment the tensorflow installation lines.

To run the API, install docker and docker-compose, execute the following command:

docker-compose up --build

sudo docker-compose up --build

To send an image and get back the boxes run the following commands: curl --request POST ip:port/endpoint -F image=@img-add

If you run the service on your local system the following request shall work perfectly:

curl --request POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/face -F image=@./sample-images/movie-stars.jpg

The output will be as follows:

{
"face_1":[269,505,571,726],
"face_10":[73,719,186,809],
"face_11":[52,829,172,931],
"face_2":[57,460,187,550],
"face_3":[69,15,291,186],
"face_4":[49,181,185,279],
"face_5":[53,318,205,424],
"face_6":[18,597,144,716],
"face_7":[251,294,474,444],
"face_8":[217,177,403,315],
"face_9":[175,765,373,917]
}

If you find something missing, please open an issue or kindly create a pull request.

1.https://github.com/pooya-mohammadi/deep_utils

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.

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