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This guide introduces you to the concept of inputs in Profiles and shows how to use them in your Profiles project.

Overview

The foundation of every companies data is the source files and data tables - these are the inputs that go into every data product a company produces.

In Profiles, inputs contain the IDs for identity graphs and the fields that build into a Customer360 (C360). They can be database tables or views, S3 buckets, and/or CSV files.

SQL Keyword: FROM

Usage

You can define inputs in the inputs.yaml file, as shown:

inputs:
  - name: rsIdentifies
    app_defaults:
      table: autotrack_data.autotrack.identifies
      occurred_at_col: timestamp
      ids:
        - select: "user_id"
          type: user_id
          entity: user
        - select: "anonymous_id"
          type: anonymous_id
          entity: user
        - select: "lower(email)"
          type: email
          entity: user
  - name: rsPages
    app_defaults:
      table: autotrack_data.autotrack.pages
      occurred_at_col: timestamp
      ids:
        - select: "user_id"
          type: user_id
          entity: user
        - select: "anonymous_id"
          type: anonymous_id
          entity: user

Best practices

• Though it is possible to bring in data sources that only have one identifier column for your entity, it is best to have two or more columns, especially for inputs that you want to use as a source for the id_stitcher model.
• If any of your ID columns are not of the string data type, then you must case them explicitly, as shown below:

      ids:
        - select: "CAST(user_id AS VARCHAR)"
          type: user_id
          entity: user