Templating Configuration
This section explains how to configure templating for SQL files.
When writing SQL files, users might utilise some kind of templating. The SQL file itself is written with placeholders which get rendered to proper SQL at run time. This can range from very simple placeholder templating to complex Jinja templating.
SQLFluff supports templated sections in SQL, see Stage 1, Templater. This is achieved by the following set of operations:
- SQLFluff pre-renders the templated SQL
- SQLFluff applies the lint and fix operations to the rendered file
- SQLFluff backports the rule violations to the templated section of the SQL.
SQLFluff does not automatically have access to the same environment used in production template setup. This means it is necessary to either provide that environment or provide dummy values to effectively render the template and generate valid SQL. Refer to the templater sections below for details.
SQLFluff natively supports the following templating engines
Also, SQLFluff has an integration to use dbt as a templater.
- dbt templater (via plugin which is covered in a different section).
NOTE
Templaters may not be able to generate a rendered SQL that cover the entire raw file.
For example, if the raw SQL uses a {% if condition %} block, the rendered version of the template will only include either the {% then %} or the {% else %} block (depending on the provided configuration for the templater), but not both.
In this case, because SQLFluff linting can only operate on the output of the templater, some areas of the raw SQL may never be seen by the linter and will not be covered by lint rules.
SQLFluff can now render multiple template variants for templaters which support it, including Jinja templater and dbt templater. See Template Variant Rendering for details, limitations and configuration.