Configuration and Caching

By default, downloaded specification documents (such as DICOM standards and IHE profiles) and generated data models (such as JSON files) are stored in a platform-specific cache directory. This location can be customized by specifying a configuration file.

Default Cache Directory

• Default cache directory location:

  🍏 MacOS
  ~/Library/Caches/dcmspec
  🐧 Linux
  ~/.cache/dcmspec
  🪟 Windows
  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\dcmspec\Cache

Configuration of Cache Directory

The cache directory used by API and CLI applications can be changed by providing a configuration file.

This file can be named config.json and placed in the default configuration folder, or its location can be specified using the --config command-line option or the DCMSPEC_CONFIG environment variable.

• Using the default config file
  If no config file is specified, dcmspec searches for config.json in the default configuration folder for the operating system:

  🍏 MacOS
  ~/Library/Application Support/dcmspec
  🐧 Linux
  ~/.config/dcmspec
  🪟 Windows
  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\dcmspec
  or
  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\dcmspec

Example config.json:

{
  "cache_dir": "./cache"
}

• Using the --config option:
  The path to the config file can be provided on the command line:

poetry run python -m src.dcmspec.cli.modattributes <table_id> --config myconfig.json

• Using the DCMSPEC_CONFIG environment variable:
  The environment variable can be set to the path of the config file:

export DCMSPEC_CONFIG=./myconfig.json
poetry run python -m src.dcmspec.cli.modattributes <table_id>