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Overview

Mage allows users to reference variables specific to your pipeline or project. These variables are accessible throughout your dbt profiles, and pipelines by using the following syntax.

SyntaxDescriptionExample
{{ env_var('...') }}Get from environment variables.{{ env_var('ENV') }}
{{ variables('...') }}Get from runtime variables.{{ variables('execution_date') }}

DBT also comes with variable and environment variable support. By default we forward pipeline variables as dbt Project variables.

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Variable interpolation examples

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dbt models

  SELECT
    *
  # get the global environment variable for prod/dev
  FROM {{ env_var('ENV') }}_users.accounts
  WHERE
    # limit query based on the runtime variable, execution_date
    created_at BETWEEN '2023-01-01' AND {{ var('execution_date') }}

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dbt profiles

jaffle_shop:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: postgres
      host: host.docker.internal
      user: postgres
      password: postgres
      port: 5432
      dbname: postgres
      schema: {{ variables('DBT_SCHEMA') }}
      threads: 4

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dbt targets

dbt target

Here, we’ve used a manually entered target to specify a postgres database dependent on the environment postgres_{{ env_var('ENV') }}.

EnvironmentKeyExample stringResult
prodENVpostgres_{{ env_var('ENV') }}postgres_prod
devENVpostgres_{{ env_var('ENV') }}postgres_dev