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Manifest JSON file

dbt Core versionManifest version
v1.7v11
v1.6v10
v1.5v9
v1.4v8
v1.3v7
v1.2v6
v1.1v5
v1.0v4

Produced by: Any command that parses your project. This includes all commands except deps, clean, debug, init

This single file contains a full representation of your dbt project's resources (models, tests, macros, etc), including all node configurations and resource properties. Even if you're only running some models or tests, all resources will appear in the manifest (unless they are disabled) with most of their properties. (A few node properties, such as compiled_sql, only appear for executed nodes.)

Today, dbt uses this file to populate the docs site, and to perform state comparison. Members of the community have used this file to run checks on how many models have descriptions and tests.

Top-level keys

  • metadata
  • nodes: Dictionary of all analyses, models, seeds, snapshots, and tests.
  • sources: Dictionary of sources.
  • metrics: Dictionary of metrics.
  • exposures: Dictionary of exposures.
  • groups: Dictionary of groups. (Note: Added in v1.5)
  • macros: Dictionary of macros.
  • docs: Dictionary of docs blocks.
  • parent_map: Dictionary that contains the first-order parents of each resource.
  • child_map: Dictionary that contains the first-order children of each resource.
  • group_map: Dictionary that maps group names to their resource nodes.
  • selectors: Expanded dictionary representation of YAML selectors.
  • disabled: Array of resources with enabled: false.

Resource details

All resources nested within nodes, sources, metrics, exposures, macros, and docs have the following base properties:

  • name: Resource name.
  • unique_id: <resource_type>.<package>.<resource_name>, same as dictionary key
  • package_name: Name of package that defines this resource.
  • root_path: Absolute file path of this resource's package. (Note: This is removed for most node types in dbt Core v1.4 / manifest v8 to reduce duplicative information across nodes, but it is still present for seeds.)
  • path: Relative file path of this resource's definition within its "resource path" (model-paths, seed-paths, etc.).
  • original_file_path: Relative file path of this resource's definition, including its resource path.

Each has several additional properties related to its resource type.

dbt JSON Schema

You can refer to dbt JSON Schema for info on describing and consuming dbt generated artifacts.

Note: The manifest.json version number is related to (but not equal to) your dbt version, so you must use the correct manifest.json version for your dbt version. To find the correct manifest.json version, select the dbt version on the top navigation (such as v1.5).

Refer to the table at the beginning of this page to understand how the Manifest version matches the dbt version.

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