I’ve recently created a small Python library mnistdb which can be used to easily load the MNIST database of handwritten digits in Python into numpy arrays without any manual effort. It works for Python 2 and Python3.

Just install the library via pip:

pip install mnistdb

Here’s an example which shows how to use it:

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import mnistdb.io as mio

data = mio.load()

print(data.trainX.shape)
print(data.trainY.shape)
print(data.testX.shape)
print(data.testY.shape)

When you’re running the code for the first time mnistdb will download the MNIST database of handwritten digits from the Internet. The database will be stored in ~/.mnistdb so that does not need to download the database for subsequent calls.

As you can see the database can be accessed easily. Auto-completion should be automatically be supported by your IDE.