Latch URLs

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Grammar

The basic structure of a Latch URL is latch://, followed by a (possibly empty) Domain, finally ending with an absolute /-separated path. This is summarized below.

latch://<DOMAIN><PATH>

In some CLI commands (notably latch cp and latch mv), the latch prefix can be omitted, resulting in a URL of the form ://<DOMAIN><PATH>.

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Domains

A domain can be in one of several different forms. Each of these domains affect the way that the path following it is resolved.

• <ACCOUNT_ID>.account: Resolve the path as if it were a path in the specified account.
• <BUCKET_NAME>.mount: Resolve the path as if it were a path in the mounted S3 bucket specified. (Note: the bucket must be mounted to Latch first)
• <NODE_ID>.node: Resolve the path as if it were a relative path under the specified node.
• shared.<ACCOUNT_ID>.account: Resolve the path as if it were shared in the specified account.

In addition to these, the empty domain (paths that look like latch:///...) and the domain shared are both valid. When used, their behavior depends on the workspace that the user is currently in.

Specifically, latch:///... is treated the same as latch://<CURRENT_WORKSPACE>.account/..., and latch://shared/... is treated the same as latch://shared.<CURRENT_WORKSPACE>.account/....

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Paths

The path following the domain, if provided, must be an absolute /-separated path. In <NODE_ID>.node domains, the path is resolved relative to the node specified. In <BUCKET_NAME>.mount domains, the path is resolved as if it were an S3 key in the mounted bucket.

A path can be omitted altogether (i.e. a path of the form latch://<DOMAIN>) if and only if the domain is of the form <NODE_ID>.node.

Whether or not a path ends with a slash does not affect the file or directory it resolves to. However, it may affect the result of a command that uses it (e.g. latch cp).

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Examples

• latch:/// points to root directory in the user’s current workspace.
• latch://71.account/bottomly/genomic.fna/ points to the file at /bottomly/genomic.fna in the account with id 71.
• latch://shared/results/summary.csv points to the file at /results/summary.csv, that was shared to the user’s current workspace.
• latch://mount-test.mount/11211a11.fastq points to the file with key 11211a11.fastq in the S3 bucket mount-test.
• latch://2698497.node points to the node with ID 2698497.
• latch://2698497.node/file.txt points to the child of the node with ID 2698497 called file.txt.