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5. Test the REST APIs

To activate the API server, simply run:

sqrl run

Then, in a web browser, go to http://localhost:4465/ to interact with the dataset APIs you've just created using the Squirrels Testing UI!

Remember to shut down the API server by pressing "Ctrl+C" before proceeding.

Test the Rendered SQL Queries​

In practice, you may wish to review what the rendered SQL queries look like (for some set of parameter selections) before actually running the queries.

To do so for the weather_by_time dataset (using the default parameter selections), run:

sqrl compile --dataset weather_by_time

This creates the folder path target/compile/default/weather_by_time with the compiled SQL queries for all the relevant SQL models (without actually running them).

tip

You can also use the short form -d instead of --dataset. If you omit this option, all datasets in the project will be compiled.

If you only care about compiling one model, you can run:

sqrl compile --dataset weather_by_time --select weather_by_time

In addition to writing the file in the target folder, this will print out the compiled SQL query as well.

If --dataset is not specified, then the --select option is ignored. This is because the traits are undefined without specifying the dataset.

tip

You can also use the short form -s instead of --select. You can also run the sql query with the --runquery or -r option. When used in conjunction with -s or --select, this will compile and run all the upstream models as well. You can find the results as csv files in the target folder.

Using Selection Test Sets​

You can also test on non-default parameter selections. Suppose you want to group by month instead of grouping by year (the default parameter selection).

In the squirrels.yml file, replace the selection_test_sets section with:

selection_test_sets:
  - name: group_by_month
    parameters:
      group_by_dim: '2'

The '2' is the ID for "Month" option defined in parameters.py. Now you can use the --test-set or -t option on the compile command to specify the test set to compile with:

sqrl compile --dataset weather_by_time --test-set group_by_month

This creates new files in the target/compile/group_by_month/weather_by_time folder (not the "target/compile/default/weather_by_time" folder we saw before).

See sqrl compile --help or the compile command page for more details.