Context Attributes

Context Attributes allow arbitrary JSON objects to be associated with datasets.

This may be as simple as a single {"key": value} pair or may be an object which provides extensive contextual metadata about a dataset, for example provenance information.

In either case, the Context Attribute must be provided as a valid JSON definition.

Syntax

To specify a single {"key": value} pair, add this directly at the command-line with the --context-attribute option:

$ dsprofile --context-attribute '{"key": "value"}' ...

Many attributes may be specified in a single context object provided at the command line, for example:

$ dsprofile --context-attribute '{"key1": "value1", "key2": 5.12, "key3": [1.0, 2.0, 3.0], "key4": {"nested_key": "nested_value"}}' ...

A more convenient option for providing multiple attributes is to store these in a file. For example, the file attributes.json contains the following JSON object.

{
  "key1": "value1",
  "key2": 5.12,
  "key3": [1.0, 2.0, 3.0],
  "key4": {"nested_key": "nested_value"}
}

This file may be redirected to the --context-attribute option at the command line:

$ dsprofile --context-attribute "$(<attributes.json)" ...

Output

Context attributes added to a dataset will be located in the metadata section of the output as the attributes value. For example:

{
  "metadata": {
    "env": {
      "created": "2026-05-01 13:18:55",
      "command": "dsprofile netcdf tests/data/test.nc",
      "version": "0.2.0",
      "os": "Linux"
    },
    "file": {
      "name": "tests/data/test.nc",
      "size": 8192,
      "digest": "b5441b97fd11a723816c7f5eb082fd0cfadce7b8af46d934fd764db2caa03b2b"
    },
    "attributes": {
        "key1": "value1",
        "key2": 5.12,
        "key3": [1.0, 2.0, 3.0],
        "key4": {"nested_key": "nested_value"}
    },
  "content": "<omitted...>"
  }
}