Project setup

Project is a directory where all annotation assets are located. It is a self-contained entity: when you start Label Studio for the first time e.g. label-studio start ./my_project --init,
it creates a directory ./my_project from where its launched.

If you want to start another project, just remove ./my_project directory, or create a new one by running label-studio start /path/to/new/project --init.

Structure

Project directory is structured as follows:

├── my_project
│   ├── config.json     // project settings
│   ├── tasks.json      // all imported tasks in a dict like {task_id: task}
│   ├── config.xml      // current project labeling config
│   ├── completions     // directory with one completion per task_id stored in one file
│   │   ├── <task_id>.json
│   ├── export          // stores archives with all results exported form web UI 
│   │   ├── 2020-03-06-15-23-47.zip

Warning: It is not recommended to modify any of the internal project files. For importing tasks, exporting completions or changing label config please use web UI or command line arguments (see label-studio start --help for details)

Labeling config

Project labeling config is an XML file that consists of:

object tags specifying input data sources from imported tasks,
control tags for configuring labeling schema (how annotation result looks like),
visual tags applying different user interface styles.

Check Available Tags

Example

Here an example config for classifying images provided by image_url key into two classes:

<View>
  <Image name="image_object" value="$image_url"/>
  <Choices name="image_classes" toName="image_object">
    <Choice value="Cat"/>
    <Choice value="Dog"/>
  </Choices>
</View>

Setup labeling config from file

It is possible to initialize a new project with predefined config.xml:

label-studio my_new_project start --init --label-config config.xml

Setup labeling config from UI

You can also use the web interface at /setup to paste your labeling config. Using web UI you also get a live update while you’re editting the config.

Setup labeling config from API

Save labeling config for the project using API:

curl -X POST -H Content-Type:application/json http://localhost:8080/api/save-config \
--data "{\"label_config\": \"<View>[...]</View>\"}"

The backend should return status 201 if config is valid and saved.
If errors occur the backend returns status 400 and response body will be JSON dict:

{
  "label_config": ["error 1 description", " error 2 description", ...]
}

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