ENH: updated the ImageLoader data loader to work with local URIs and remote URLs

[ahron1]

Updated ImageLoader in data_loaders.py to accept images from both local URIs and remote URLs. Raised as feature request

Description of changes

• Improvements & Bug fixes
  • No bug fixes. 1 improvement (new functionality, described below)
• New functionality
  • Currently, the ImageLoader data loader only accepts local URIs. When working with multimodal embeddings, many users need to pass remote images as URLs. This PR makes a small update to load_image in class ImageLoader in utils/data_loaders.py to detect whether the passed URI is a remote URL. If it is, then it fetches the remote URL's data and then processes it. If it is not a remote URL, it works the same as before (currently).

Test plan

How are these changes tested?

• By running pytest locally.

Documentation Changes

Are all docstrings for user-facing APIs updated if required? Do we need to make documentation changes in the docs repository? Happy to update the documentation myself after the PR is merged.

[github-actions[bot]]

Reviewer Checklist

Please leverage this checklist to ensure your code review is thorough before approving

Testing, Bugs, Errors, Logs, Documentation

• [ ] Can you think of any use case in which the code does not behave as intended? Have they been tested?
• [ ] Can you think of any inputs or external events that could break the code? Is user input validated and safe? Have they been tested?
• [ ] If appropriate, are there adequate property based tests?
• [ ] If appropriate, are there adequate unit tests?
• [ ] Should any logging, debugging, tracing information be added or removed?
• [ ] Are error messages user-friendly?
• [ ] Have all documentation changes needed been made?
• [ ] Have all non-obvious changes been commented?

System Compatibility

• [ ] Are there any potential impacts on other parts of the system or backward compatibility?
• [ ] Does this change intersect with any items on our roadmap, and if so, is there a plan for fitting them together?

Quality

• [ ] Is this code of a unexpectedly high quality (Readability, Modularity, Intuitiveness)

[ahron1]

@tazarov Ok, done.

There's now a new ImageURLoader class.

It works without auth data_loaders.ImageURLoader("https://images.pexels.com/photos/10981514/pexels-photo-10981514.jpeg")

and also with auth: data_loaders.ImageURLoader("https://url_to_image", "username", "password")

Please check.

[ahron1]

@tazarov Hi, any update on this yet?

[ahron1]

@tazarov Hi Trayan, any remaining concerns before merging this?

[jeffchuber]

@ahron1 why are there certs checked into this PR?

[ahron1]

@ahron1 why are there certs checked into this PR?

@jeffchuber Not sure tbh, must have been by mistake. Just removed the certs and pushed a new commit.