Configuration

Configuration

Configuring dataherb is easy. It can be done using the built-in dataherb configure comamnd or manually.

Using Command Line Tool

Run the command

dataherb configure

and some questions will show up:

[?] Where should I put all the datasets and flora database? An empty folder is recommended.: ~/dataherb
[?] How would you name the default flora? Please keep the default value if this is not clear to you.: flora

The first question is setting the workdir.

Different ways of perserving the metadata

We have two different ways of perserving the flora meta data.

1. Using a single file for all the datasets.
2. Using a folder for each dataset.

dataherb supports both. By default, we will use folders. For the above configuration, we will find the folder for all the flora metadata at ~/dataherb/flora/flora.

Note that ~/[workdir]/flora/ is the path where we put all the flora metadata. If the answer to the second question, aka name of the flora, is set to flora2, we will have all the flora metadata located at ~/[workdir]/flora/flora2`.

We can have multiple flora, for example, we can have two, flora and flora2

flora
├── flora
│   └── git-dataherb-python-demo-dataset
│        └── dataherb.json
└── flora2
    └── git-dataherb-python-demo-dataset-2
        └── dataherb.json

config file already exists

If a config file (~/.dataherb/config.json) is already created, a warning will be shown:

Config file (~/.dataherb/config.json) already exists

You could overwrite it or leave it be.

Show Current Configuration

To inspect the current configuration, use the option -s (or --show).

dataherb configure -s

We will get something similar to the following.

The current config for dataherb is:
{
  "default": {
    "flora": "flora"
  },
  "workdir": "/Users/itsme/dataherb"
}
The above config is extracted from ~/.dataherb/config.json

Locate the Configuration File

The option -l (or --locate) opens the folder that contains the configuration file config.json.

dataherb configure -l

Manually Create Configuration

Once the dataherb configure command is run, a config.json file will be created inside the folder ~/.dataherb.

{
    "workdir": "~/dataherb",
    "default": {
        "flora": "flora",
        "aggregrated": false
    }
}

key	example	description
workdir	~/dataherb	The work directory for dataherb.
default.flora	flora	The name of the flora to be used by default. For example, the value flora means we will use the flora.json database in the folder (workdir setting in the above row)/flora/flora.json.
default.aggregrated	false	Whether to use a single json file for all the flora metadata. It is highly recommended to set it to false.

More about workdir

By default, two folders will be created inside it: ~/dataherb/flora (default storage for all flora) and ~/dataherb/serve (the cache folder for the website of all datasets when we run dataherb serve)

More about default.flora

If workdir is set to ~/dataherb, then the database will be ~/dataherb/flora/flora. If the value of default.flora is set to abc, then the database will be ~/dataherb/flora/abc.