Contribute a code change

To modify existing Great Expectations code, you complete the following tasks:

Fork and clone the Great Expectations repository
Create a virtual environment (optional)
Install great_expectations
Configure backends for testing (optional)
Test code changes
Test performance
Submit a pull request
Sign the contributor license agreement (CLA)

To discuss your code change before you implement it, join the Great Expectations Slack community and make your suggestion in the #contributing channel.

To request a documentation change, or a change that doesn't require local testing, see the README in the docs repository.

To create and submit a Custom Expectation to Great Expectations for consideration, see CONTRIBUTING_EXPECTATIONS in the great_expectations repository.

To submit a custom package to Great Expectations for consideration, see CONTRIBUTING_PACKAGES in the great_expectations repository.

Prerequisites

A GitHub account.
A working version of Git on your computer. See Getting Started - Installing Git.
A new SSH (Secure Shell Protocol) key. See Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent.
The latest Python version installed and configured. See Python downloads.

Fork and clone the Great Expectations repository

Open a browser and go to the Great Expectations repository.
Click Fork and then Create Fork.
Click Code and then select the HTTPS or SSH tabs.
Copy the URL, open a Git terminal, and then run the following command:
```
git clone <url>
```
Run the following command to specify a new remote upstream repository that will be synced with the fork:
```
git remote add upstream git@github.com:great-expectations/great_expectations.git
```
Run the following command to create a branch for your changes:
```
git checkout -b <branch-name>
```

Create a virtual environment (optional)

A virtual environment allows you to install an independent set of Python packages to their own site directory, isolated from the base/system install of Python.

Great Expectations requires a Python version from 3.8 to 3.11.

Python

Run the following command to create a virtual environment named gx_dev:
```
python3 -m venv <path_to_environments_folder>/gx_dev
```
Run the following command to activate the virtual environment:
```
source <path_to_environments_folder>/gx_dev/bin/activate
```
Run the following command to upgrade pip, the "package installer" for Python:
```
pip install --upgrade pip
```

Anaconda

Run the following command to create a virtual environment named gx_dev:
```
conda create --name gx_dev
```
Run the following command to activate the virtual environment:
```
conda activate gx_dev
```

Install Great Expectations and extra requirements from your local repository

Run the following command from the root of the great_expectations repository to install Great Expectations in editable mode, with extra requirements for testing:
```
pip install -c constraints-dev.txt -e ".[test]"
```
To specify other dependencies, add a comma after test and enter the dependency name(s). For example, ".[test, postgresql, trino]".

The supported extra dependencies include: arrow, athena, aws_secrets, azure, azure_secrets, bigquery, clickhouse, cloud, dremio, excel, gcp, hive, mssql, mysql, pagerduty, postgresql, redshift, s3, snowflake, spark, teradata, test, trino, vertica.

Check below to see if any of your desired dependencies need system packages installed, before pip install.
Optional. If you're using Amazon Redshift (redshift) or PostgreSQL (postgresql), run one of the following commands to install the pg_config executable, which is required to install the psycopg2-binary Python package:
```
sudo apt-get install -y libpq-dev
```
or
```
brew install postgresql
```
Optional. If you're using Microsoft SQL Server (mssql) or Dremio (dremio), run one of the following commands to install unixodbc, which is required to install the pyodbc Python package:
```
sudo apt-get install -y unixodbc-dev
```
or
```
brew install unixodbc
```
If your Mac computer has an Apple Silicon chip, you might need to
1. specify additional compiler or linker options. For example:
```
export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/homebrew/Cellar/unixodbc/[your version]/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/Cellar/unixodbc/[your version]/include"`
```
1. reinstall pyodbc:
```
python -m pip install --force-reinstall --no-binary :all: pyodbc
python -c "import pyodbc; print(pyodbc.version)"
```
1. install the ODBC 17 driver: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/odbc/linux-mac/install-microsoft-odbc-driver-sql-server-macos?view=sql-server-ver15
2. see the following resources for more information:
- Installing Microsoft ODBC driver for macOS
- Installing Microsoft ODBC driver for Linux
Add ulimit -n 4096 to the ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc files to prevent OSError: [Errno 24] Too many open files errors.
Run the following command to confirm pandas and SQLAlchemy with SQLite tests are passing:
```
 ulimit -n 4096

 pytest -v
```

Configure backends for testing (optional)

Some Great Expectations features require specific backends for local testing.

Prerequisites

Docker (PostgreSQL and MySQL). See Get Docker.

PostgreSQL

CD to assets/docker/postgresql in your great_expectations repository, and then and run the following command:
```
docker-compose up -d
```

Run the following command to verify the PostgreSQL container is running:

docker-compose ps

The command should return results similar to the following example:

	Name                       Command              State           Ports
———————————————————————————————————————————
postgresql_travis_db_1   docker-entrypoint.sh postgres   Up      0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp

Run the following command to run tests on the PostgreSQL container:
```
pytest -v --postgresql
```
When you finish testing, run the following command to shut down the PostgreSQL container:
```
docker-compose down
```

Troubleshooting

Errors similar to the following are returned when you try to start the PostgreSQL container and another service is using port 5432:

	psycopg2.OperationalError: could not connect to server: Connection refused
	    Is the server running on host "localhost" (::1) and accepting
	    TCP/IP connections on port 5432?
	could not connect to server: Connection refused
	    Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting
	    TCP/IP connections on port 5432?

	sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: (psycopg2.OperationalError) FATAL:  database "test_ci" does not exist
	(Background on this error at: http://sqlalche.me/e/e3q8)

To resolve these errors, configure Docker to run on another port and confirm the server details are correct.

MySQL

If another service is using port 3306, Docker might start the container but silently fail to set up the port.

CD to assets/docker/mysql in your great_expectations repository, and then and run the following command:
```
docker-compose up -d
```

Run the following command to verify the MySQL container is running:

docker-compose ps

The command should return results similar to the following example:

      Name                   Command             State                 Ports
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mysql_mysql_db_1   docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld   Up      0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp, 33060/tcp

Run the following command to run tests on the MySQL container:
```
pytest -v --mysql
```
When you finish testing, run the following command to shut down the MySQL container:
```
docker-compose down
```

Spark

Use the following information to use Spark for code testing.

Prerequisites

Java. See Java downloads.
The PATH or JAVA_HOME environment variables set correctly. See Setting Java variables in Windows or Setting Java variables in Linux.

On Mac, run the following commands to set the PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home`
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

Install PySpark

When you install PySpark, Spark is also installed. See Spark Overview.

Run the following command to install PySpark and Apache Spark:

pip install pyspark

Test code changes

Great Expectations production code must be thoroughly tested, and you must perform unit testing on all branches of every method, including likely error states. Most new feature contributions should include multiple unit tests. Contributions that modify or extend existing features should include a test of the new behavior.

Most contributions do not require new integration tests, unless they change the Great Expectations CLI.

Great Expectations code is not tested against all SQL database types. Continuous Integration (CI) testing for SQL is limited to PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL, and BigQuery.

Unit testing

To perform unit testing, run pytest in the great_expectations directory root. By default, tests are run against pandas and sqlite. You can use pytest flags to test additional backends like postgresql, spark, and mssql. For example, to run a test against PostgreSQL backend, you run pytest --postgresql.

The following are the supported pytest flags for general testing:

--spark: Execute tests against Spark backend.
--postgresql: Execute tests against PostgreSQL.
--mysql: Execute tests against MySql.
--mssql: Execute tests against Microsoft SQL Server.
--bigquery: Execute tests against Google BigQuery (requires additional set up).
--aws: Execute tests against AWS resources such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Athena (requires additional setup).

To skip all local backend tests (except pandas), run pytest --no-sqlalchemy.

Testing can generate warning messages. These warnings are often caused by dependencies such as pandas or SQLAlchemy. Run pytest --no-sqlalchemy --disable-pytest-warnings to suppress these warnings.

Marking tests

All tests in Great Expectations must include one marker from the REQUIRED_MARKERS list. To view the list of defined markers, see tests/conftest.py. To verify each test is marked, run invoke marker-coverage if invoke is installed, or run pytest --verify-marker-coverage-and-exit. When verification fails, a list of unmarked tests and the required markers appears.

BigQuery testing

Select or create a Cloud Platform project.
Setup Authentication.
In your project, create a BigQuery dataset named test_ci and set the dataset default table expiration to .1 day.

Run the following command to test your project with the GE_TEST_BIGQUERY_PROJECT and GE_TEST_BIGQUERY_DATASET environment variables:

GE_TEST_BIGQUERY_PROJECT=<YOUR_GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT>
GE_TEST_BIGQUERY_DATASET=test_ci
pytest tests/test_definitions/test_expectations_cfe.py --bigquery

Unit testing Expectations

One of the most significant features of an Expectation is that it produces the same result on all supported execution environments including pandas, SQLAlchemy, and Spark. To accomplish this, Great Expectations encapsulates unit tests for Expectations as JSON files. These files are used as fixtures and executed using a specialized test runner that executes tests against all execution environments.

The following is the test fixture file structure:

{
    "expectation_type" : "expect_column_max_to_be_between",
    "datasets" : [{
        "data" : {...},
        "schemas" : {...},
        "tests" : [...]
    }]
}

Below datasets are three entries: data, schemas, and tests.

Data

The data parameter defines a DataFrame of sample data to apply Expectations against. The DataFrame is defined as a dictionary of lists, with keys containing column names and values containing lists of data entries. All lists within a dataset must have the same length. For example:

"data" : {
    "w" : [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1],
    "x" : [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, null, null],
    "y" : [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4],
    "z" : ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", null, null, null, null, null],
    "zz" : ["1/1/2016", "1/2/2016", "2/2/2016", "2/2/2016", "3/1/2016", "2/1/2017", null, null, null, null],
    "a" : [null, 0, null, null, 1, null, null, 2, null, null],
},

Schemas

The schema parameter defines the types to be used when instantiating tests against different execution environments, including different SQL dialects. Each schema is defined as a dictionary with column names and types as key-value pairs. If the schema isn’t specified for a given execution environment, Great Expectations introspects values and attempts to identify the schema. For example:

"schemas": {
    "sqlite": {
        "w" : "INTEGER",
        "x" : "INTEGER",
        "y" : "INTEGER",
        "z" : "VARCHAR",
        "zz" : "DATETIME",
        "a" : "INTEGER",
    },
    "postgresql": {
        "w" : "INTEGER",
        "x" : "INTEGER",
        "y" : "INTEGER",
        "z" : "TEXT",
        "zz" : "TIMESTAMP",
        "a" : "INTEGER",
    }
},

Tests

The tests parameter defines the tests to be executed against the DataFrame. Each item in tests must include title, exact_match_out, in, and out. The test runner executes the named Expectation once for each item, with the values in in supplied as kwargs.

The test passes if the values in the expectation Validation Result correspond with the values in out. If exact_match_out is true, then every field in the Expectation output must have a corresponding, matching field in out. If it’s false, then only the fields specified in out need to match. For most use cases, false is a better result, because it allows narrower targeting of the relevant output.

suppress_test_for is an optional parameter to disable an Expectation for a specific list of backends. For example:

"tests" : [{
    "title": "Basic negative test case",
    "exact_match_out" : false,
    "in": {
        "column": "w",
        "result_format": "BASIC",
        "min_value": null,
        "max_value": 4
    },
    "out": {
        "success": false,
        "observed_value": 5
    },
    "suppress_test_for": ["sqlite"]
},
...
]

The test fixture files are stored in subdirectories of tests/test_definitions/ corresponding to the class of Expectation:

column_map_expectations
column_aggregate_expectations
column_pair_map_expectations
column_distributional_expectations
multicolumn_map_expectations
other_expectations

By convention, the name of the file is the name of the Expectation, with a .json suffix. Creating a new JSON file automatically adds the new Expectation tests to the test suite.

If you are implementing a new Expectation, but don’t plan to immediately implement it for all execution environments, you should add the new test to the appropriate lists in the candidate_test_is_on_temporary_notimplemented_list_v2_api method within tests/test_utils.py.

You can run just the Expectation tests with pytest tests/test_definitions/test_expectations.py.

Test performance

Test the performance of code changes to determine they perform as expected. BigQuery is required to complete performance testing.

Run the following command to set up the data for testing:

GE_TEST_BIGQUERY_PEFORMANCE_DATASET=<YOUR_GCP_PROJECT> tests/performance/setup_bigquery_tables_for_performance_test.sh

Run the following command to start the performance test:

pytest tests/performance/test_bigquery_benchmarks.py \
--bigquery --performance-tests \
-k 'test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3]'  \
--benchmark-json=tests/performance/results/`date "+%H%M"`_${USER}.json \
-rP -vv

Some benchmarks take significant time to complete. In the previous example, only the test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3] benchmark runs. The output should appear similar to the following:

--------------------------------------------------- benchmark: 1 tests ------------------------------------------------------
Name (time in s)                         Min     Max    Mean  StdDev  Median     IQR  Outliers     OPS  Rounds  Iterations
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3]     5.0488  5.0488  5.0488  0.0000  5.0488  0.0000       0;0  0.1981       1           1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Run the following command to compare the test results:

$ py.test-benchmark compare --group-by name tests/performance/results/initial_baseline.json tests/performance/results/*${USER}.json

The output should appear similar to the following:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- benchmark 'test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3]': 2 tests ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name (time in s)                                        Min               Max              Mean            StdDev            Median               IQR            Outliers     OPS            Rounds  Iterations
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3] (initial_base)     5.0488 (1.0)      5.0488 (1.0)      5.0488 (1.0)      0.0000 (1.0)      5.0488 (1.0)      0.0000 (1.0)           0;0  0.1981 (1.0)           1           1
test_taxi_trips_benchmark[1-True-V3] (2114_work)        6.4675 (1.28)     6.4675 (1.28)     6.4675 (1.28)     0.0000 (1.0)      6.4675 (1.28)     0.0000 (1.0)           0;0  0.1546 (0.78)          1           1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Optional. If your change is intended to improve performance, run the following command to generate the benchmark results that confirm the performance improvement:
```
$ tests/performance/run_benchmark_multiple_times.sh minimal_multithreading
```
The name for the tests should include the first argument provided to the script. In the previous example, this was tests/performance/results/minimal_multithreading_*.json.

Submit a pull request

Push your changes to the remote fork of your repository.
Create a pull request from your fork. See Creating a pull request from a fork.
Add a meaningful title and description for your pull request (PR). Provide a detailed explanation of what you changed and why. To help identify the type of issue you’re submitting, add one of the following identifiers to the pull request (PR) title:
- [BUGFIX] for PRs that address minor bugs without changing behavior.
- [FEATURE] for significant PRs that add a new feature likely to require being added to our feature maturity matrix.
- [MAINTENANCE] for PRs that focus on updating repository settings or related changes.
- [CONTRIB] for the contribution of Custom Expectations and supporting work into the contrib/ directory.
- [HACKATHON] for submissions to an active Great Expectations Hackathon.
In the section for design review, include a description of any prior discussion or coordination on the features in the PR, such as mentioning the number of the issue where discussion has taken place. For example: Closes #123”, linking to a relevant discuss or slack article, citing a team meeting, or even noting that no discussion is relevant because the issue is small.
If this is your first Great Expectations contribution, you'll be prompted to complete the Contributor License Agreement (CLA). Complete the CLA and add @cla-bot check as a comment to the pull request (PR) to indicate that you’ve completed it.
Wait for the Continuous Integration (CI) checks to complete and then correct any syntax or formatting issues.

A Great Expectations team member reviews, approves, and merges your PR. Depending on your GitHub notification settings, you'll be notified when there are comments or when your changes are successfully merged.

Issue tags

Great Expectations uses a stalebot to automatically tag issues without activity as stale, and closes them when a response is not received within a week. To prevent stalebot from closing an issue, you can add the stalebot-exempt tag.

Additionally, Great Expectations adds the following tags to indicate issue status:

Thehelp wanted tag identifies useful issues that require help from community contributors to accelerate development.
The enhacement and expectation-request tags identify new Great Expectations features that require additional investigation and discussion.
The good first issue tag identifies issues that provide an introduction to the Great Expectations contribution process.

Contributor license agreement (CLA)

When you contribute code, you affirm that the contribution is your original work and that you license the work to the project under the project’s open source license. Whether or not you state this explicitly, by submitting any copyrighted material via pull request, email, or other means you agree to license the material under the project’s open source license and warrant that you have the legal authority to do so.

Please make sure you have signed our Contributor License Agreement (either Individual Contributor License Agreement v1.0 or Software Grant and Corporate Contributor License Agreement (“Agreement”) v1.0).

We are not asking you to assign copyright to us, but to give us the right to distribute your code without restriction. We ask this of all contributors in order to assure our users of the origin and continuing existence of the code. You only need to sign the CLA once.

Issue Tags

We use stalebot to automatically tag issues without activity as stale, and close them if no response is received in one week. Adding the stalebot-exempt tag will prevent the bot from trying to close the issue.

Additionally, we try to add tags to indicate the status of key discussion elements:

help wanted covers issues where we have not prioritized the request, but believe the feature is useful and so we would welcome community contributors to help accelerate development.
enhacement and expectation-request indicate discussion of potential new features for Great Expectations
good first issue indicates a small-ish task that would be a good way to begin making contributions to Great Expectations

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CONTRIBUTING_CODE.md

CONTRIBUTING_CODE.md

Contribute a code change

Prerequisites

Fork and clone the Great Expectations repository

Create a virtual environment (optional)

Python

Anaconda

Install Great Expectations and extra requirements from your local repository

Configure backends for testing (optional)

Prerequisites

PostgreSQL

Troubleshooting

MySQL

Spark

Prerequisites

Install PySpark

Test code changes

Unit testing

Marking tests

BigQuery testing

Unit testing Expectations

Data

Schemas

Tests

Test performance

Submit a pull request

Issue tags

Contributor license agreement (CLA)

Issue Tags

Files

CONTRIBUTING_CODE.md

Latest commit

History

CONTRIBUTING_CODE.md

File metadata and controls

Contribute a code change

Prerequisites

Fork and clone the Great Expectations repository

Create a virtual environment (optional)

Python

Anaconda

Install Great Expectations and extra requirements from your local repository

Configure backends for testing (optional)

Prerequisites

PostgreSQL

Troubleshooting

MySQL

Spark

Prerequisites

Install PySpark

Test code changes

Unit testing

Marking tests

BigQuery testing

Unit testing Expectations

Data

Schemas

Tests

Test performance

Submit a pull request

Issue tags

Contributor license agreement (CLA)

Issue Tags