dbt project files

Before we get started building out the dbt project, let’s go over some of the files in the project.

dbt_project.yml

From the dbt docs:

Every dbt project needs a dbt_project.yml file — this is how dbt knows a directory is a dbt project. It also contains important information that tells dbt how to operate your project.

Refer to the dbt documentation for more information about dbt_project.yml.

profiles.yml

The next file we’ll cover is the profiles.yml file. This file contains connection details for your data platform, such as those for the DuckDB database we’ll use in this course. In this step, we’ll set up a dev environment for the project to use, which is where the DuckDB database is located.

Before we start working, you should know:

  • Don’t put credentials in this file! We’ll be pushing profiles.yml to git, which will compromise them. When we set up the file, we’ll show you how to use environment variables to store connection details securely.
  • We’ll create the file in the analytics directory, instead of in dbt’s recommended .dbt. We’re doing this for a few reasons:
    • It allows dbt to use the same environment variables as Dagster
    • It standardizes the way connections are created as more people contribute to the project

Set up profiles.yml

Now you’re ready - let’s go!

  1. Navigate to the analytics directory.

  2. In this folder, create a profiles.yml file.

  3. Copy the following code into the file:

    dagster_dbt_university:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: duckdb
      path: '../{{ env_var("DUCKDB_DATABASE", "data/staging/data.duckdb") }}'

Let’s review what this does:

  • Creates a profile named dagster_dbt_university
  • Set the default target (data warehouse) for the dagster_dbt_university profile to dev
  • Defines one target: dev
  • Sets the type to duckdb
  • Sets the path using a dbt macro to reference the DUCKDB_DATABASE environment variable in the project’s .env file. With this, your dbt models will be built in the same DuckDB database as where your Dagster assets are materialized.

The DUCKDB_DATABASE environment variable is a relative path from the project’s root directory. For dbt to find it, we prefixed it with ../ to ensure it resolves correctly.