How to create an interactive Documentation in dbt using the dbt docs command

📘 Introduction

In this hands-on dbt tutorial, we’ll walk you step-by-step through generating and serving interactive documentation for your dbt project.

📌 This is a must-know topic for the dbt Analytics Engineering Certification Exam, so mastering it now puts you one step closer to passing the exam and leveling up your data engineering skills! 👨‍🎓

✅ Prerequisites

☑️ A dbt project set up
☑️ Existing dbt models defined in your models/ directory

💡 What is the dbt docs command?

The dbt docs command allows you to:

• Generate documentation for your dbt project
• Host an interactive documentation site locally
• Explore model details, columns, sources, macros, and lineage graphs

🧪1️⃣ Existing dbt models in your dbt project

We’ve already created some dbt models in our project.

Now, our goal is to generate a documentation for our dbt project and all our models, making it easier to explore metadata and relationships.

⚙️2️⃣ Generate Documentation

Run the following command to generate documentation:

dbt docs generate

This will:

• Compile your project metadata into a manifest.json file
• Create catalog.json with model and column-level details

🚀3️⃣ Launch Documentation