starters.md

Kedro starters

A Kedro starter contains code in the form of a Cookiecutter template for a Kedro project. Using a starter is like using a pre-defined layout when creating a presentation or document.

How to use a starter

To create a Kedro project using a starter, apply the --starter flag to kedro new. For example:

kedro new --starter=<path-to-starter>

`path-to-starter` could be a local directory or a VCS repository, as long as [Cookiecutter](https://cookiecutter.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage.html) supports it.

Starter aliases

We provide aliases for common starters maintained by the Kedro team so that you don't have to specify the full path. For example, to create a project using the spaceflights-pandas starter:

kedro new --starter=spaceflights-pandas

To list all the aliases we support:

kedro starter list

Official Kedro starters

The Kedro team maintains the following starters for a range of Kedro projects:

• astro-airflow-iris: An example project using the Iris dataset with a minimal setup for deploying the pipeline on Airflow with Astronomer.
• databricks-iris: An example project using the Iris dataset with a setup for Databricks deployment.
• spaceflights-pandas: The spaceflights tutorial example code with pandas datasets.
• spaceflights-pandas-viz: The spaceflights tutorial example code with pandas datasets and visualisation and experiment tracking kedro-viz features.
• spaceflights-pyspark: The spaceflights tutorial example code with pyspark datasets.
• spaceflights-pyspark-viz: The spaceflights tutorial example code with pyspark datasets and visualisation and experiment tracking kedro-viz features.

Archived starters

The following Kedro starters have been archived and are unavailable in Kedro version 0.19.0 and beyond.

• standalone-datacatalog
• pandas-iris
• pyspark-iris
• pyspark

The latest version of Kedro that supports these starters is Kedro 0.18.14.

• To check the version of Kedro you have installed, type kedro -V in your terminal window.
• To install a specific version of Kedro, e.g. 0.18.14, type pip install kedro==0.18.14.
• To create a project with one of these starters using kedro new, type the following (assuming Kedro version 0.18.14) kedro new --starter=pandas-iris --checkout=0.18.14 (for example, to use the pandas-iris starter).

Starter versioning

By default, Kedro will use the latest version available in the repository. If you want to use a specific version of a starter, you can pass a --checkout argument to the command:

kedro new --starter=spaceflights-pandas --checkout=0.1.0

The --checkout value can point to a branch, tag or commit in the starter repository.

Under the hood, the value will be passed to the --checkout flag in Cookiecutter.

Use a starter with a configuration file

By default, when you create a new project using a starter, kedro new asks you to enter the project_name, which it uses to set the repo_name and python_package name. This is the same behaviour as when you create a new empty project

Kedro also allows you to specify a configuration file when you create a project using a Kedro starter. Use the --config flag alongside the starter:

kedro new --config=my_kedro_project.yml --starter=spaceflights-pandas

This option is useful when the starter requires more configuration than the default mode requires.

Create a starter

You can build your own starters for reuse within a project or team, as described in the how to create a Kedro starter documentation.