how to construct encoder rnn and something about pack_padded_sequence and pad_packed_sequence

encoder_bigru.py

class EncoderRNN(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, hidden_size, embedding, n_layers=1, dropout=0):
        super(EncoderRNN, self).__init__()
        self.n_layers = n_layers
        self.hidden_size = hidden_size
        self.embedding = embedding

        # Initialize GRU; the input_size and hidden_size params are both set to 'hidden_size'
        #   because our input size is a word embedding with number of features == hidden_size
        self.gru = nn.GRU(hidden_size, hidden_size, n_layers,
                          dropout=(0 if n_layers == 1 else dropout), bidirectional=True)

    def forward(self, input_seq, input_lengths, hidden=None):
        # Convert word indexes to embeddings
        embedded = self.embedding(input_seq)
        # Pack padded batch of sequences for RNN module
        packed = torch.nn.utils.rnn.pack_padded_sequence(embedded, input_lengths)
        # Forward pass through GRU
        outputs, hidden = self.gru(packed, hidden)
        # Unpack padding
        outputs, _ = torch.nn.utils.rnn.pad_packed_sequence(outputs)
        # Sum bidirectional GRU outputs
        outputs = outputs[:, :, :self.hidden_size] + outputs[:, : ,self.hidden_size:]
        # Return output and final hidden state
        return outputs, hidden
        
# something useful:
# We should take output[-1, :, :hidden_size] (normal RNN) and output[0, :, hidden_size:] (reverse RNN), concatenate them, and feed the result to the subsequent dense neural network.
# The returned hidden states are the ones after consuming the whole sequence. They can be safely passed to the decoder.