Skip to content

Quickstart#

Navigate to your dbt project's directory. This should be a folder that contains a dbt_project.yml file.

cd path/to/dbt/project

Parse your dbt proejct#

dbt parse

Parsing your dbt project generates a manifest.json artifact, which Checkers uses to understand the structure of your dbt project.

Many other dbt commands also generate a manifest.json, including dbt build, dbt test, etc. But we recommend using dbt parse as it usually takes just a few seconds.

Generate default config#

checkers init

The default configuration file is called linter.toml. You can use it to enable and disable certain checks. It can also be used to pass parameters to individual tests, controlling various aspects of how they run.

The init command will also generate an example linter.py file. This file contains a custom lint check. For more information on writing custom checks, see the related user guide.

Run the checks#

checkers run

The run command will scan your dbt project for any errors, and print its results to the console.

PASS   check_model_has_description my_first_dbt_model
PASS   check_model_has_description my_second_dbt_model

By default, the run command will return a non-zero exit code if it detects any models that fail any checks. This enables you to use Checkers as part of a CI process, so that any changes to your dbt project which introduce error are blocked before they make it into production.

For help on configuring how Checkers run, use the following command:

checkers run --help

Next steps#