Rerun

The Entity Path Hierarchy

Entity Paths

As mentioned in the Entity Component overview, all Entities within Rerun have a unique Entity Path.

The first argument to each log function is this path. Each time you log to a specific entity path you will update the entity, i.e. log a new instance of it along the timeline. Each logging to a path must be of the same type (you cannot log an image to the same path as a point cloud).

Rerun treats these paths as being arranged in a hierarchy with the "/" character acting as a separator between path elements. The conventional path semantics including concepts of "root" and "parent" / "child" generally apply.

When writing paths in logging APIs the leading "/" is omitted.

Note that there is no path-level distinction between "file-like" and "directory-like" concepts. Any path may be an entity, and entities may be direct children of other entities. For example:

rr.log_image("image", img)
rr.log_points("image/points", points)

However, it is also acceptable to leave implicitly "empty" elements in your paths as well.

rr.log_image("camera/image", img)
rr.log_points("camera/image/detections/points", points)

Nothing needs to be explicitly logged to "camera" or "camera/image/detection" to make the above valid.

Path parts

A path can look like this: camera/"left"/detection/#42/bbox. Each part (between the slashes) can either be:

  • A name (e.g. camera), intended for hard-coded names.
  • A "quoted string", intended for dynamic strings, like serials numbers.
  • An integer, intended for hashes or similar.
  • A number sequence, prefixed by #, intended for indices.
  • A UUID.

So for instance, foo/bar/#42/5678/"CA426571"/a6a5e96c-fd52-4d21-a394-ffbb6e5def1d is a valid path.

Path Hierarchy Functions

Path hierarchy plays an important role in a number of different functions within Rerun:

  • With the Transform System the transform component logged to any Entity always describes the relationship between that Entity and its direct parent.
  • When resolving the meaning of class_id and keypoint_id components, Rerun uses the Annotation Context from the nearest ancestor in the hierarchy.
  • When adding data to Blueprints, it is common to add a path and all of its descendants.
  • When using the log_cleared API, it is possible to mark an entity and all of its descendants as being cleared.
  • In the future, it will also be possible to use path-hierarchy to set default-values for descendants. #1158
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