Layout Response Objects

When using Layout on a document with Amazon Textract, the different layout elements are returned as a BlockType in the Block object. These elements correspond to the different portions of the layout, and are:

• Title — The main title of the document. Returned as LAYOUT_TITLE.

• Header — Text located in the top margin of the document. Returned as LAYOUT_HEADER.

• Footer — Text located in the bottom margin of the document. Returned as LAYOUT_FOOTER.

• Section Title — The titles for individual document sections. Returned as LAYOUT_SECTION_HEADER.

• Page Number — The page number of the documents. Returned as LAYOUT_PAGE_NUMBER.

• List — Any information grouped together in list form. Returned as LAYOUT_LIST.

• Figure — Indicates the location of an image in a document. Returned as LAYOUT_FIGURE.

• Table — Indicates the location of a table in the document. Returned as LAYOUT_TABLE.

• Key Value — Indicates the location of form key-values in a document. Returned as LAYOUT_KEY_VALUE.

• Text — Text that is present typically as a part of paragraphs in documents. Returned as LAYOUT_TEXT

Each element returns two key pieces of information. First is the bounding box of the layout element, which shows its location. Second, the element contains a list of IDs. These IDs point to the components of the layout element, often lines of text represented by LINE objects. Layout elements can also point to different objects, such as TABLE objects, Key-Value pairs, or LAYOUT_TEXT elements in the case of LAYOUT_LIST.

Elements are returned in implied reading order. This means layout elements will be returned by document analysis left to right, top to bottom. For multicolumn pages, elements are returned from the top of the leftmost column, moving left to right until the bottom of the column is reached. Then, the elements from the next leftmost column are returned in the same way.

Below is an example of a LAYOUT_TITLE response element, with the bounding box geometry section removed. The three IDs point towards the three LINE objects representing the three lines of text in the title.

      {
            "BlockType": "LAYOUT_TITLE",
            "Confidence": 57.177734375,
            "Geometry": {
               ...
            },
            "Id": "e02654d0-dce1-4205-bf1c-6fac1cc0a35a",
            "Relationships": [
                {
                    "Type": "CHILD",
                    "Ids": [
                        "8afeedb5-44f2-48ec-ae97-07edc204f8d8",
                        "fa505358-51ff-405c-b227-e51faffb28fe",
                        "95ef9c97-5a98-4060-9100-d09222b166f6"
                    ]
                }
            ]
        },
                    

When Amazon Textract detects a list in a document's layout, instead of the IDs pointing directly to the LINE objects, it instead points to the LAYOUT_TEXT objects located within the list. Below is a shortened example response displaying this relationship. Within the LAYOUT_TEXT objects you can see the IDs corresponding to the IDs in the LAYOUT_LIST response object. These LAYOUT_TEXT objects then contain their own list of IDs, which correspond to the LINE objects for each line of text in the layout element.

{
    "BlockType": "LAYOUT_LIST",
    "Relationships": [ 
        { 
            "Ids": [ "98d2f88c-9116-4025-bf4f-70e4345ac347",   // LAYOUT_TEXT
                     "d132fcd3-2be0-4f23-8c98-61295f5c6ac2" ], // LAYOUT_TEXT
            "Type": "CHILD"
        }
    ],
    "ID": "c685fb89-692b-4e80-8083-7b783735e287",
    ...
},
{
    "BlockType": "LAYOUT_TEXT",
    "ID": "98d2f88c-9116-4025-bf4f-70e4345ac347",
    ...
},
{
    "BlockType": "LAYOUT_TEXT",
    "ID": "d132fcd3-2be0-4f23-8c98-61295f5c6ac2",
    ...
}