Prefix macro calls

[emmahunt]

Describe the bug

The unified package calls snowow-utils macros without a prefix, which throws errors in some circumstances e.g. overwriting custom models without snowplow-utils locally installed

-- currently
 {{ web_only_fields("ev") }}

-- I believe it should be
 {{ snowplow_unifiied.web_only_fields("ev") }}

Steps to reproduce

Create a copy of the snowplow_unified_sessions_this_run model locally, disable the unified version of the model and run dbt run or dbt compile.

Expected results

The custom model (copy) runs without issues

Actual results

An error message such as: 'platform_independent_fields' is undefined. This can happen when calling a macro that does not exist. Check for typos and/or install package dependencies with "dbt deps".

Screenshots and log output

(dbt-env) emmahunt@Emmas-MacBook-Air dbt % dbt compile --full-refresh --vars 'snowplow__allow_refresh: true'

09:11:04  Running with dbt=1.7.3
09:11:04  Registered adapter: databricks=1.7.2
09:11:05  Found 22 models, 96 tests, 3 seeds, 3 operations, 17 sources, 0 exposures, 0 metrics, 935 macros, 0 groups, 0 semantic models
09:11:05  
09:11:32  Concurrency: 1 threads (target='prod')
09:11:32  
09:11:51  09:11:51 + Snowplow: Standard incremental run
09:12:00  Encountered an error:
Runtime Error
  Compilation Error in model snowplow_unified_sessions_this_run (models/sessions/scratch/snowplow_unified_sessions_this_run.sql)
    'platform_independent_fields' is undefined. This can happen when calling a macro that does not exist. Check for typos and/or install package dependencies with "dbt deps".

System information

The contents of your packages.yml file:

packages:
  - package: snowplow/snowplow_unified
    version: [">=0.1.2", "<0.2.0"]

Which database are you using dbt with?

• postgres
• redshift
• bigquery
• snowflake
• databricks
• other (specify: ____________)

The output of dbt --version:

Core:
  - installed: 1.7.3
  - latest:    1.7.6 - Update available!

The operating system you're using:
MacOS 14.3 (23D56)

The output of python --version:
Python 3.11.5

Additional context

N/A

Are you interested in contributing towards the fix?

Happy to contribute

[georgewoodhead]

Hi @emmahunt, thanks for raising this issue! You will find you encounter this behaviour across all of our dbt packages. Whilst we could add the package name prefix to all the macros, we have no real way of enforcing this with future updates and package development work.

I think it’s fair to say that if a user is customising any of the models, they should be expected to update these macros themselves. The returned error message is quite helpful here in identifying what is the issue, but perhaps we could add a note in our docs as something to keep in mind when customising any of the models.

There might be other opinions here so will keep this ticket open for now.

[emmahunt]

thanks for the reply and explanation George! I see your point. Just want to loop @rlh1994 into the conversation as I was discussing this with him as well 🙂

[rlh1994]

@georgewoodhead I think we should support this where possible, especially because we are use them so heavily throughout the package - I just need to remind myself if this impacts the ability of a user to overwrite the macro or not...

[rlh1994]

Just verified, this does work still even with the prefix, so I think we should prefix them all to make it easier for users to make custom models then only overwrite the required ones in the future. It's not a high priority item but we should get round to it.