How to use the Great Expectations command line interface (CLI)

The Great Expectations command line is organized using a <NOUN> <VERB> syntax. This guide is organized by nouns (datasource, suite, docs) then verbs (new, list, edit, etc).

Basics

You can get a list of Great Expectations commands available to you by typing great_expectations --help. Each noun command and each verb sub-command has a description, and should help you find the thing you need.

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All Great Expectations commands have help text which you can access by adding --help to the end of a command. For example, by running great_expectations suite new --help you'll see help output for that specific command.

By running great_expectations --help, you will see all top-level commands that are available in the CLI:

$ great_expectations --help
Usage: great_expectations [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Welcome to the great_expectations CLI!

  Most commands follow this format: great_expectations <NOUN> <VERB>

  The nouns are: checkpoint, datasource, docs, init, project, store, suite,
  validation-operator. Most nouns accept the following verbs: new, list,
  edit

Options:
  --version                Show the version and exit.
  --v3-api / --v2-api      Default to v3 (Batch Request) API. Use --v2-api for
                           v2 (Batch Kwargs) API

  -v, --verbose            Set great_expectations to use verbose output.
  -c, --config TEXT        Path to great_expectations configuration file
                           location (great_expectations.yml). Inferred if not
                           provided.

  -y, --assume-yes, --yes  Assume "yes" for all prompts.
  --help                   Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  checkpoint  Checkpoint operations
  datasource  Datasource operations
  docs        Data Docs operations
  init        Initialize a new Great Expectations project.
  project     Project operations
  store       Store operations
  suite       Expectation Suite operations

You can further explore available options and commands with the --help flag, for example:

$ great_expectations datasource --help
Using v3 (Batch Request) API
Usage: great_expectations datasource [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Datasource operations

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  delete  Delete the datasource specified as an argument
  list    List known Datasources.
  new     Add a new Datasource to the data context.

An existing data context can be provided with the variable GX_HOME, for example:

export GX_HOME="${HOME}/ge_dir_1/great_expectations"
great_expectations datasource list

Shell autocompletion for the CLI

If you want to enable autocompletion for the Great Expectations CLI, you can execute following commands in your shell (or add them to your .bashrc/.zshrc or ~/.config/fish/completions/):

bash

$ eval "$(_GREAT_EXPECTATIONS_COMPLETE=source_bash great_expectations)"

zsh

$ eval "$(_GREAT_EXPECTATIONS_COMPLETE=source_zsh great_expectations)"

fish

$ eval (env _GREAT_EXPECTATIONS_COMPLETE=source_fish great_expectations)

(you'll have to create a ~/.config/fish/completions/great_expectations.fish file).

Alternatively, if you don't want the eval command to slow down your shell startup time, you can instead add the commands as a script to your shell profile. For more info, see the official Click documentation