How to configure the ProvenanceGenerator

This section deals with configuring the ProvenanceGenerator for your use case.

Accepted configurations

There are two possible ways to configure the ProvenanceGenerator:

  1. Settings.py: You can define the configuration in your apps settings.py. On initialization, the ProvenanceGenerator searches for a PROVENANCE dictionary in your settings.py, if you don’t explicitly pass in another configuration:

    settings.py
    PROVENANCE = {...}
    apps.py
    class YourAppConfig:
    def ready(self):
        self.generator_instance = ProvenanceGenerator.get()

  2. Explicitly passing a dictionary: You can define a dictionary anywhere and pass it to the ProvenanceGenerator or create a ProvenanceGeneratorConfiguration beforehand:

    config.py
    CONFIG = {...}

# or create a ProvenanceGeneratorConfiguration
GENERATOR_CONFIG = ProvenanceGeneratorConfiguration(CONFIG)
    apps.py
    from config import CONFIG, GENERATOR_CONFIG

class YourAppConfig:
    def ready(self):
        self.generator_instance = ProvenanceGenerator.get(CONFIG)

        # or use the already created GENERATOR_CONFIG
        self.generator_instance = ProvenanceGenerator.get(GENERATOR_CONFIG)

Important

The ProvenanceGenerator implements the Singleton pattern. Using this pattern, there can always be only one instance of a ProvenanceGenerator existing. Whenever you want to instantiate a ProvenanceGenerator, you need to use the ProvenanceGenerator.get() method to always get the same instance. This ensures that the ProvenanceGenerator always creates correct relations between provenance records later on.

Configuration sections

A valid configuration dictionary must contain at least the following sections, which have to be dictionaries themselves:

  • ENTITIES

  • NAMESPACES consisting of a DEFAULT namespace and at least one EXTRA namespace

  • OUTPUT consisting of at least one serialization format in section SERIALIZE

Additionally it is possible to add the following optional sections:

  • AGENTS (type: dictionary)

  • PATH (type: string) in the OUTPUT dictionary

  • GRAPHIC (type: dictionary) in the OUTPUT dictionary

  • OTHER (type: dictionary)

See also

For further information about each section, please see the respective documents:

Activities are not defined in the configuration, more information can be found here: How to record activities