include meta data in tasks

[pdlje82]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Actually this is not a feature request, I just want your opinion on this workflow:

I have a lot of metadata I want to include in the json tasks, so that I can filter these tasks later in LabelStudio.

Describe the solution you'd like

I figured out that meta data can be included in a task like this:

[
    {
        "data": {
            "image": "s3:/...1.jpg",
            "meta_stuff_I_want_to_add": "meta data string1",    # <--
            "more_meta_stuff": "meta data string2"              # <--
        },
        "annotations": [],
        "predictions": [
            {
                "result": [
                    {....

After importing to LS, the meta data appears like this:

Also, the meta data is later saved in the annotation which is synced to a cloud storage, which I need.

(1)
So, is this task setup of the "correct"? Is there any other, better way to do this?

(2)
In order to keep filtering in labelstudio performant, should I rather work with one-hot encoding:

[
    {
        "data": {
            "image": "s3:/...1.jpg",
            "meta_feature_1": True
            "meta_feature_2": False
            ...

or stick to strings:

[
    {
        "data": {
            "image": "s3:/...1.jpg",
            "feature": "meta_feature_1"
            ...

What is your experience? With one-hot encoding I might end up with 100+ additional columns. Would this be a problem for the Backend DB or Labelstudio itself?

Thanks!

[heidi-humansignal]

Hello,

Yes, that is one of the ways to do it. Its just depends on if you want easier accessiltibility to the metadata. If there are quite a bit of meta data fields, you can also trying nested approach. Something like this:

data": { "my_text": "Opossums are great", "ref_id": 456, "meta_info": { "timestamp": "2020-03-09 18:15:28.212882", "location": "North Pole" }  },

It sort of groups the related categories together and filter should still work.

Thank you,
Abu

Comment by Abubakar Saad
Workflow Run

[pdlje82]

Thanks, I will try

[heidi-humansignal]

Great, please let us know how that goes.

Thank you,
Abu

Comment by Abubakar Saad
Workflow Run

[pdlje82]

Hi @heidi-humansignal,

I wonder if labelstudio can work with Booleans?

[ { "data": { "image": "s3:/...1.jpg", "meta_feature_1": True, ...

The "True" in the metadata appears as string in labelstudio with no option to switch to Boolean. In order to properly filter, I changed the data to a number int.

[ { "data": { "image": "s3:/...1.jpg", "meta_feature_1": 1, ...

With this, I can set the datatype to "int" in Labelstudio and filter properly. But this is a bit painful, as later in my workflow, when exporting the annotations, I have to convert the int in task.data.meta_feature_1 back to Boolean.

So, does Labelstudio somehow allow to import Boolean?