.. testsetup:: *

    import torch
    from pytorch_lightning.trainer.trainer import Trainer
    from pytorch_lightning.callbacks.base import Callback
    from pytorch_lightning.core.lightning import LightningModule

    class LitMNIST(LightningModule):

        def __init__(self):
            super().__init__()

        def train_dataloader():
            pass

        def val_dataloader():
            pass

        def test_dataloader():
            pass

Child Modules
-------------
Research projects tend to test different approaches to the same dataset.
This is very easy to do in Lightning with inheritance.

For example, imagine we now want to train an Autoencoder to use as a feature extractor for MNIST images.
We are extending our Autoencoder from the `LitMNIST`-module which already defines all the dataloading.
The only things that change in the `Autoencoder` model are the init, forward, training, validation and test step.

.. testcode::

    class Encoder(torch.nn.Module):
        pass

    class Decoder(torch.nn.Module):
        pass

    class AutoEncoder(LitMNIST):

        def __init__(self):
            super().__init__()
            self.encoder = Encoder()
            self.decoder = Decoder()
            self.metric = MSE()

        def forward(self, x):
            return self.encoder(x)

        def training_step(self, batch, batch_idx):
            x, _ = batch

            representation = self.encoder(x)
            x_hat = self.decoder(representation)

            loss = self.metric(x, x_hat)
            return loss

        def validation_step(self, batch, batch_idx):
            self._shared_eval(batch, batch_idx, 'val')

        def test_step(self, batch, batch_idx):
            self._shared_eval(batch, batch_idx, 'test')

        def _shared_eval(self, batch, batch_idx, prefix):
            x, _ = batch
            representation = self.encoder(x)
            x_hat = self.decoder(representation)

            loss = self.metric(x, x_hat)
            self.log(f'{prefix}_loss', loss)


and we can train this using the same trainer

.. code-block:: python

    autoencoder = AutoEncoder()
    trainer = Trainer()
    trainer.fit(autoencoder)

And remember that the forward method should define the practical use of a LightningModule.
In this case, we want to use the `AutoEncoder` to extract image representations

.. code-block:: python

    some_images = torch.Tensor(32, 1, 28, 28)
    representations = autoencoder(some_images)