Configuration

ADA configuration options can be given as in a config file, environmental variables, or (CLI/constructor) arguments. In order of precedence from high to low:

CLI/constructor arguments ← Environment variables ← ~/.ada/ada.conf ←  /etc/ada.conf  ← <package>/etc/ada.conf 

The configuration options are:

Key	Type	Default	Description
`api`	string	-	dCache REST API URL (must start with `https://` and end with `/api/v1` or `/api/v2`)
`channel_timeout`	integer	`3600`	Default SSE channel timeout in seconds
`debug`	boolean	`false`	Enable debug logging
`tokenfile`	string	—	Default token file path (precedence over netrcfile)
`netrcfile`	string	—	Default netrc file path (precedence over proxy authentification)
`igtf`	boolean	`true`	Use IGTF Grid certificates for proxy authentication

Note that the order of precedence for authentication is (high-to-low):

tokenfile ← netrcfile ← Grid proxy

Config File

ADA uses a simple key=value format, with lines starting with # as comments. This is compatible with the original Bash version. An example can be found in ada.conf.

# ADA configuration
api=https://dcacheview.grid.surfsara.nl:22880/api/v1
tokenfile=tokenfile.conf
igtf=true
channel_timeout=3600
debug=false
netrcfile=~/.netrc

Config file location, in order of precedence from high to low, is expected to be:

Priority	Path	Description
1 (highest)	`~/.ada/ada.conf`	User-level config
2	`/etc/ada.conf`	System-wide config
3 (lowest)	`<package>/etc/ada.conf`	Bundled defaults

Environment Variables

Environment variables override config file values. They are checked after loading config files but before applying explicit CLI arguments.

Variable	Overrides	Description
`ada_api`	`api`	dCache API URL
`ada_debug`	`debug`	Enable debug output (`true`/`false`)
`ada_channel_timeout`	`channel_timeout`	SSE channel timeout
`ada_igtf`	`igtf`	Use IGTF certificates
`ada_tokenfile`	`tokenfile` (precedence over ada_netrcfile)	Token file path
`ada_netrcfile`	`netrcfile`	Netrc file path (precedence over X509_USER_PROXY)
`BEARER_TOKEN`	—	Direct bearer token string (precedence over ada_tokenfile)
`X509_USER_PROXY`	—	X.509 proxy file path
`X509_CERT_DIR`	—	Grid certificate directory

Example Setup

Minimal setup to avoid passing arguments every time:

# Create config directory
mkdir -p ~/.ada
chmod 700 ~/.ada

# Create config file
cat > ~/.ada/ada.conf << 'EOF'
api=https://dcacheview.grid.surfsara.nl:22880/api/v1
EOF

# Store your token
echo "your-bearer-token-here" > ~/.ada/token
chmod 600 ~/.ada/token

# Point to it in config
echo "tokenfile=$HOME/.ada/token" >> ~/.ada/ada.conf

Now you can use ADA without any arguments:

ada-cli whoami
ada-cli list /pnfs/grid.sara.nl/data/myproject

Library Configuration

When using ADA as a library, you can also pass custom config paths (in order of high-to-low precedence):

from ada.client import AdaClient

# Use default config file search
client = AdaClient()

# Use custom config paths
client = AdaClient(config_paths=["/custom/path/ada.conf"])

# Override everything explicitly (ignores config files for these values)
client = AdaClient(
    api="https://dcacheview.grid.surfsara.nl:22880/api/v1",
    tokenfile="/path/to/token",
    debug=True,
)

Explicit constructor arguments always have the highest priority.