Reference Queries

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Introduction

The Reference Queries feature allows you to include SQL code from another file in your current SQL query. This is useful for reusing common parts of a query, ensuring that your SQL code is consistent and easy to maintain.

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How It Works

To reference SQL code from another file, use the syntax {ref ('other_query')}, where other_query is the name of another .sql file located in the /queries folder. This syntax imports the raw SQL code from the specified file to the location where it is added.

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Referencing queries as a source

An important use case for referencing queries is adding them as source. You can do this as follows:

SELECT *
FROM {ref ('users_clean')}

Which will translate to:

SELECT id, first_name, ...
FROM users

SELECT *
FROM (
    SELECT
        id,
        first_name,
        last_name,
        email
)

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About queries path resolution

When you reference a query, the path is resolved relative to the current query. This means that you can reference queries in the same folder, in a parent folder, or in a sibling folder.

Assuming you are editing queries/users/query.sql and you want to reference /queries/users/orders query:

queries/
  users/
    query.sql
    orders/
      query.sql

-- queries/users/query.sql
SELECT *
FROM {ref ('orders/query')}

This is equivalent to use a relative path:

-- queries/users/query.sql
SELECT *
FROM {ref ('./orders/query')}

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Absolute paths.

You can also reference queries with a / prefix. This means the path of the query is resolved from the root of queries folder. Following the previous example, you can reference /queries/users/orders query as follows:

-- queries/users/query.sql
SELECT *
FROM {ref ('/users/orders/query.sql')}