How do I add an arbitrary value to a TensorFlow summary?

Question

In order to log a simple value val to a TensorBoard summary I need to

val = 5
test_writer.add_summary(sess.run(tf.scalar_summary('test', val)), global_step)

Is

sess.run(tf.scalar_summary('test', val))

really necessary to get val added as a summary?

Answer 1

You can construct the summary by yourself, like

from tensorflow.core.framework import summary_pb2

value = summary_pb2.Summary.Value(tag="Accuracy", simple_value=0.95)
summary = summary_pb2.Summary(value=[value])

you can then add summary using add_summary like in your code.