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The fal run command

NOTICE: The fal run command was previously the only way to run scripts. We still support the fal run behavior but we recommend the fal flow run for more capabilities.

By default, the fal run command runs the Python scripts as a post-hook, only on the models that were run on the last dbt run; that means that if you are using model selection with dbt, fal will only run on the models dbt ran. To achieve this, fal needs the dbt-generated file run_results.json available.

If you are running fal without a run_results.json available, or just want to specify which models you want to run the scripts for, fal handles dbt's selection flags for dbt run as well as offering an extra flag to ignore the run results and run all models:

--all                 Run scripts for all models.
-s SELECT [SELECT ...], --select SELECT [SELECT ...]
                      Specify the nodes to include.
-m SELECT [SELECT ...], --models SELECT [SELECT ...]
                      Specify the nodes to include.
--exclude EXCLUDE [EXCLUDE ...]
                      Specify the nodes to exclude.
--selector SELECTOR   The selector name to use, as defined in selectors.yml

You may pass more than one selection at a time:

$ fal run --select model_alpha model_beta
... | Starting fal run for following models and scripts:
model_alpha: script.py
model_beta: script.py, other.py

Running scripts before dbt runs​

The --before flag let's users run scripts before their dbt runs.

Given the following schema.yml:

models:
  - name: boston
    description: Ozone levels
    config:
      materialized: table
    meta:
      owner: "@meder"
      fal:
        scripts:
          before:
            - fal_scripts/postgres.py
          after:
            - fal_scripts/slack.py

fal run --before will run fal_scripts/postgres.py script regardless if dbt has calculated the boston model or not. fal run without the --before flag, will run fal_scripts/slack.py, but only if boston model is already calculated by dbt.

A typical workflow involves running dbt run after invoking fal run --before.

$ fal run --before --select boston
$ dbt run --select boston