Showing annotations from another app

If people mark regions on images in another app, e.g. defects for image quality reviews, the image viewer can show those of the runs' inputs on the runs' images, read-only: outlined on the images, with what each is, by group (e.g. the app's workspaces), with links to open them in the app. See what users get in the user guide.

QA-Board asks your app through an annotation source: a Python module, in a package installed with the backend, that finds the annotations of an input.

Write a source

The source gets the absolute path of the run's input on the server. It returns the groups of annotations and the annotations, in the input's pixels:

my_site/defects.py

import requests

label = "Defects"                  # what users pick in the viewer
description = "From the defects app, by project"  # optional, on hover
group_noun = "project"             # optional, what the groups are ("group" by default)

def annotations(path):
  found = requests.get("https://defects.example.com/api/images", params={"path": path}, timeout=10).json()
  return {
    # users: whose they are. Users see theirs by default, the others when they pick them
    "groups": [{"id": p["id"], "label": p["name"], "detail": f"by {p['owner']}", "url": p["url"], "users": [p["owner"]]} for p in found["projects"]],
    "annotations": [{
      "id": d["id"], "group": d["project_id"],
      "x": d["x"], "y": d["y"], "w": d["width"], "h": d["height"],
      "label": d["type"],                # e.g. "Noise"
      "tags": d["tags"],                 # optional
      "fields": {"Importance": d["importance"], "score": d["score"]},  # optional, shown as they are
      "url": d["url"],                   # optional, opens it in your app
    } for d in found["defects"]],
  }

Only x, y, w and h are required. The viewer colors annotations by group. Groups without annotations are fine. Errors are shown to users in the viewer.

Install it

Declare the source with an entry point, in the qaboard.annotations group, in your site package or any package installed in the backend's image (with docker compose, the backend's QABOARD_EXTRA build argument installs deployments/<site>/cli):

pyproject.toml

[project.entry-points."qaboard.annotations"]
defects = "my_site.defects"

Restart the backend: the viewer offers Defects under Annotations in the regions menu. Several sources can be installed side by side.

How QA-Board calls it

• The viewer asks as soon as an image shows, so that the regions button says how many annotations there are: keep the lookup of one input fast. Runs of the same input share it, and viewers ask 3 at a time per page.
• The backend keeps the answer for each input for 5 minutes (in Redis when it has one), and asks again when the file changes. Whether groups are the user's (their users) is decided for each user, after.
• Users see the annotations of the files they can see in QA-Board: the source doesn't need to check access.
• The backend also reads the input's size (from its header), and the viewer scales the annotations to the images shown. For inputs it can't read (e.g. raw), the size in the input's metadata (width, height) is used, if any.
• The API is GET /api/v1/output/image/annotations/<source>?path=<the input's absolute path>.