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Set-up and run dbt Package

This step assumes you have data in a table named ATOMIC.EVENTS which will be used to run the snowplow-ecommerce dbt package to model Snowplow e-commerce data.

Step 1: Set-up Variables

The snowplow_ecommerce dbt package comes with a list of variables, each with a default value that you may need to overwrite in your own dbt project’s dbt_project.yml file. For details you can have a look at our docs which contains descriptions and default values of each variable, or you can look in the installed package’s project file which can be found at(https://docs.snowplow.io/docs/modeling-your-data/modeling-your-data-with-dbt/).

For the sake of simplicity we have selected the variables that you will most likely need to overwrite, the rest can be changed at a later stage if and when it is needed.

  • snowplow__start_date: The date of the first tracked event.
  • snowplow__ecommerce_event_names: List of event names to include in our e-commerce data, default is just snowplow_ecommerce_action
  • snowplow__events: Variable to overwrite the events table in case it is named differently.
  • snowplow__number_category_levels: Variable to overwrite the maximum number of levels you have in your product categories e.g. books/fiction/magical-fiction has 3 levels
  • snowplow__number_checkout_steps: The index of the checkout step which represents a completed transaction. This is required to enable working checkout funnel analysis.
  • snowplow__enable_mobile_events: Whether to look for mobile e-commerce events or not. Note that we overwrite the domain_sessionid and page_view_id fields with mobile fields in these cases. You can read more about it here.

To overwrite these, add the following snippet to the dbt_project.yml:

vars:
  snowplow_ecommerce:
    snowplow__start_date: '2022-10-01'
    snowplow__ecommerce_event_names: ['snowplow_ecommerce_action']
    snowplow__events: 'atomic.events'
    snowplow__number_category_levels: 4
    snowplow__number_checkout_steps: 4
    # Set to false if you are not tracking any events on mobile
    snowplow__enable_mobile_events: true

Step 2: Add the selectors.yml to your project

The e-commerce package provides a suite of suggested selectors to help run and test the models, these group our (and any custom) models together in a single identifier.

These are defined in the selectors.yml file within the package, however to use these model selections you will need to copy this file into your own dbt project directory.

This is a top-level file and therefore should sit alongside your dbt_project.yml file.

Step 3: Run the model

Execute the following either through your CLI or from within dbt Cloud. If your data is spread over a period of more than 30 days you will need to run the model more than once to fully process your data.

dbt run --selector snowplow_ecommerce

This should take a couple of minutes to run each time, depending on how many events you have per day.