# Output record adapters

Output record adapters are often used to generate debug or state information. By default, the location to which this data is written will be overridden by the `--outputDir` flag.

In most cases, however, it is undesirable for these files to be written to the same location as the Forge output files.

In these cases, an output record adapter can be configured to instead respect the `--stateDir` flag by selecting the "Maintain State" checkbox.

Now any files generated by this output record adapter will be written to the [appdir]/data/state/ directory.

Note that the output file name must still be specified in the "URL" property of the record adapter. The `--outputPrefix` flag only overrides the indexer adapter output file names, not output record adapter file names.

Related concepts
Input record adapters