Snapshot properties

Snapshots properties can be declared in .yml files in:

• your snapshots/ directory (as defined by the snapshot-paths config)
• your models/ directory (as defined by the model-paths config)

We recommend that you put them in the snapshots/ directory. You can name these files whatever_you_want.yml, and nest them arbitrarily deeply in subfolders within the snapshots/ or models/ directory.

snapshots/<filename>.yml

version: 2

snapshots:
  - name: <snapshot name>
    description: <markdown_string>
    meta: {<dictionary>}
    docs:
      show: true | false
      node_color: <color_id> # Use name (such as node_color: purple) or hex code with quotes (such as node_color: "#cd7f32")
    config:
      <snapshot_config>: <config_value>
    tests:
      - <test>
      - ...
    columns:
      - name: <column name>
        description: <markdown_string>
        meta: {<dictionary>}
        quote: true | false
        tags: [<string>]
        tests:
          - <test>
          - ... # declare additional tests
      - ... # declare properties of additional columns

    - name: ... # declare properties of additional snapshots

Define snapshots in YAML

Defining a snapshot in YAML treats snapshots as a distinct resource type, separate from models, allowing for improved organization and consistency within your code.

They don't contain logic, similar to exposures, sources, and tests. To add extra logic to your snapshot, you can break it out into an ephemeral model for cleaner development and testing, and then create a snapshot of that model.

snapshots/<filename>.yml

# snapshots/my_snapshots.yml
snapshots:
  - name: orders_snapshot
    relation: source('jaffle_shop', 'orders')
    config:
      schema: snapshots
      database: analytics
      unique_key: id
      strategy: timestamp
      updated_at: updated_at

In this example, the snapshot configuration tracks changes to the orders table over time. The transformation in this snapshot is: select * from {{ source('jaffle_shop', 'orders') }}.