Custom editor overview

You can create a custom editor to suit the needs of your labeling tasks. Explore some of our open-source custom editors here.

A Minimal Example
<script src="https://api.labelbox.com/static/labeling-api.js"></script>
<div id="form"></div>
<script>
function label(label){
  Labelbox.setLabelForAsset(label).then(() => {
    Labelbox.fetchNextAssetToLabel();
  });
}

Labelbox.currentAsset().subscribe((asset) => {
  if (asset){
    drawItem(asset.data);
  }
})
function drawItem(dataToLabel){
  const labelForm = `
    <img src="${dataToLabel}" style="width: 300px;"></img>
    <div style="display: flex;">
      <button onclick="label('bad')">Bad Quality</button>
      <button onclick="label('good')">Good Quality</button>
    </div>
  `;
  document.querySelector('#form').innerHTML = labelForm;
}

</script>
Labelbox Pluggable Interface Architecture

Labelbox allows the use of custom label editors. Custom label editors minimally define a labeling ontology and can be configured to look and feel like a labeling interface. A minimal custom editor imports labeling-api.js and uses the fetch and submit functions to integrate with Labelbox. While Labelbox makes it simple to do basic labeling of images and text, there are a variety of other data types such as point clouds, maps, videos or medical DICOM imagery that require bespoke labeling interfaces. With this in mind, Labelbox is designed to facilitate the creation, installation, and maintenance of custom labeling frontends.

Using labeling-api.js

To develop a Labelbox frontend, import labeling-api.js and use the 2 APIs described below to fetch the next data and then submit the label against the data. Note that multiple data can be loaded in a single fetch if a row in the CSV file contains an array of data pointers.

Attach the Labelbox Client Side API

<script src="https://api.labelbox.com/static/labeling-api.js"></script>

Get a row to label

Labelbox.fetchNextAssetToLabel().then((dataToLabel) => {
  // ... Put all your drawing logic into Labelbox.currentAsset() as seen in the examples.
  // this function will emit a new asset to that stream
});

Save the label for a row

Labelbox.setLabelForAsset(label); // labels the asset currently on the screen

Hello World Example

Try it in your browser (The project must be setup first)

Full Example
<script src="https://api.labelbox.com/static/labeling-api.js"></script>
<div id="form"></div>
<script>
function label(label){
  Labelbox.setLabelForAsset(label).then(() => {
    Labelbox.fetchNextAssetToLabel();
  });
}

Labelbox.currentAsset().subscribe((asset) => {
  if (asset){
    drawItem(asset.data);
  }
})
function drawItem(dataToLabel){
  const labelForm = `
    <img src="${dataToLabel}" style="width: 300px;"></img>
    <div style="display: flex;">
      <button onclick="label('bad')">Bad Quality</button>
      <button onclick="label('good')">Good Quality</button>
    </div>
  `;
  document.querySelector('#form').innerHTML = labelForm;
}

</script>

Full API Reference

Reference Interfaces
Image classification interface source code
Text classification interface source code
Local Development of custom editors

Custom editors are developed locally. Once the custom editor is ready to use, you can install it in Labelbox by pointing to a hosted version of the editor.

Run localhost server

  1. Start the localhost server in a directory containing your custom editor frontend files. For example, run the server inside custom-interfaces/hello-world to run the hello world custom editor locally.
    python -m SimpleHTTPServer
  2. Open your browser and navigate to the localhost endpoint provided by the server.
  3. Customize the labeling frontend by making changes to index.html.
  4. Restart the server and refresh the browser to see the updates.

Installing a custom labeling frontend in labelbox.com

When you are ready to use your custom editor on Labelbox, upload your index.html file to a cloud service that exposes a URL for Labelbox to fetch the file. If you don’t have a hosting service on-hand, you can quickly get setup with Now from Zeit.

Quick start: custom editor hosting with Now

  • Create an account at Zeit, download and install Now here: https://zeit.co/download
  • With Now installed, navigate to the directory with your custom editor (where your index.html is located) and launch Now in your terminal by typing now. The Now service will provide a link to your hosted labeling interface file.
  • Within the Labeling Interface menu of the Settings tab of your Labelbox project, choose Custom and paste the link in the URL to labeling frontend field as shown in the video below.

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