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Documentation

Documentation

Learn how to create and host a documentation website.

We'll cover the following...

Overview of documentation

dbt provides the option to render documentation as a website.

Documentation home page
Documentation home page

The website includes useful features, such as compiled SQL:

Documentation of a model's code
Documentation of a model's code

We can also give dbt descriptions for our models and tables:

Documentation of a model's columns
Documentation of a model's columns

How to set up documentation

To set up documentation, we need to create some property files and run a series of commands to host our website.

Property files

When setting up documentation, it’s recommended to set up some descriptions in a property file.

YAML
version: 2
models:
  - name: orders
    description: This table contains orders.
    columns:
      - name: order_id
        description: This is the unique identifier of an order.
      - name: customer_id
        description: This is the unique identifier of a customer.
  - name: customers
    columns:
      - name: product_id
        description: This is the unique identifier of a product.
      - name: order_status
        description: The current status of an order.

Here, we set up a description for all of our models and their ...