Nested Structure

Documents can be nested both horizontally and vertically via .matches and .chunks. The picture below illustrates the recursive Document structure.

Attribute	Description
doc.chunks	The list of sub-Documents of this Document. They have granularity + 1 but same adjacency
doc.matches	The list of matched Documents of this Document. They have adjacency + 1 but same granularity
doc.granularity	The “depth” of the nested chunks structure
doc.adjacency	The “width” of the nested match structure

You can add chunks (sub-Document) and matches (neighbor-Document) to a Document:

• Add in constructor:

  d = Document(chunks=[Document(), Document()], matches=[Document(), Document()])
  

• Add to existing Document:

  d = Document()
  d.chunks = [Document(), Document()]
  d.matches = [Document(), Document()]
  

• Add to existing doc.chunks or doc.matches:

  d = Document()
  d.chunks.append(Document())
  d.matches.append(Document())
  

Both doc.chunks and doc.matches return DocumentArray.

To get a clear picture of a nested Document, use summary(), e.g.:

d.summary()

 <Document ('id', 'chunks', 'matches') at 7f907d786d6c11ec840a1e008a366d49>
    └─ matches
          ├─ <Document ('id', 'adjacency') at 7f907c606d6c11ec840a1e008a366d49>
          └─ <Document ('id', 'adjacency') at 7f907cba6d6c11ec840a1e008a366d49>
    └─ chunks
          ├─ <Document ('id', 'parent_id', 'granularity') at 7f907ab26d6c11ec840a1e008a366d49>
          └─ <Document ('id', 'parent_id', 'granularity') at 7f907c106d6c11ec840a1e008a366d49>

What’s next?

When you have multiple Documents with nested structures, traversing over certain chunks and matches can be crucial. This is simple thanks to DocumentArray as shown in Access Documents.

Note that some methods rely on these two attributes, while other methods require these two attributes to be filled in advance. For example, match() will fill .matches, whereas evaluate() requires .matches to be filled.