Project

Dictum project is a collection of YAML files stored in a specially structured directory. To generate scaffolding for a new project, run dictum new in the CLI.

Default project structure

In addition to the project.yml file, a project directory contains definitions of Tables with Measures and Dimensions and of course Metrics.

The default directory structure is as follows:

├── metrics
│   ├── metric1.yml
│   ├── ...
│   ├── subdirectory
│   │   ├── metric2.yml
├── profiles.yml
├── project.yml
├── tables
│   ├── table1.yml
└── unions.yml

• metrics — This directory stores metrics, one file per metric. Files can be arranged in arbitrary subdirectories, but in that case metric filenames must be globally unique (metrics can reference each other by that name).
• tables — Stores information about tables, organized the same way as metrics.
• unions.yml — This file contains definitions of unions
• profiles.yml — This file tells Dictum how to connect to the data source, which database driver to use etc (see Backend)

project.yml

The heart of a Dictum project is project.yml file. It must be present in the root of a project directory. It contains general information about your project: project name, how Dictum should display numbers and dates, where Dictum can find definitions of metrics etc.

name: |
    string, required
    A project name.
description: |
    string, optional
    Project description.
locale: |
    string, defaults to "en_US"
    A locale to use for this project. This will affect how
    numbers, dates and currency values are displayed.
currency: |
    string, defaults to "USD"
    Default currency to use for metrics with currency format.
    You can specify a different currency in the metric formatting options.

tables_path: |
    string, defaults to "tables"
    Path to the definition of tables. If a directory, table
    definitions are assumed to be stored in separate .yml
    files with filenames (without the extension) corresponding
    to table IDs.
    If a .yml file, the root object must be a dictionary with keys corresponsing to table IDs.
metrics_path: |
    string, defaults to "metrics"
    Like tables, but for metrics.
unions_path: |
    string, defaults to "unions.yml"
    Like tables, but for dimension unions.
profiles_path: |
    string, defaults to "profiles.yml"
    Like tables, but for backend profiles.