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Config.yml

In order to use GrowthBook for experimentation, you need to connect to a data source. There are two main ways to configure GrowthBook: via the UI, or via a config.yml file.

The default way to define these is by filling out forms in the GrowthBook UI, which persists them to MongoDB.

The other option is to create a config.yml file, which allows for version control and easier management of your configuration. In the Docker container, this file must be placed at /usr/local/src/app/config/config.yml. Below is an example file:

datasources:
  warehouse:
    type: postgres
    name: Main Warehouse
    # Connection params (different for each type of data source)
    params:
      host: localhost
      port: 5432
      user: root
      password: ${POSTGRES_PW} # use env for secrets
      database: growthbook
    # How to query the data (same for all SQL sources)
    settings:
      userIdTypes:
        - userIdType: user_id
          description: Logged-in user id
        - userIdType: anonymous_id
          description: Anonymous visitor id
      queries:
        exposure:
          - id: user_id
            name: Logged-in user experiments
            userIdType: user_id
            query: >
              SELECT
                user_id,
                received_at as timestamp,
                experiment_id,
                variation_id,
                context_location_country as country
              FROM
                experiment_viewed
            dimensions:
              - country
        identityJoins:
          - ids: ["user_id", "anonymous_id"]
            query: SELECT user_id, anonymous_id FROM identifies

Data Source Connection Params​

The contents of the params field for a data source depends on the type.

As seen in the example above, you can use environment variable interpolation for secrets (e.g. ${POSTGRES_PW}).

Redshift, ClickHouse, Postgres, and Mysql (or MariaDB)​

type: postgres # or "redshift" or "mysql" or "clickhouse"
params:
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  user: root
  password: password
  database: growthbook

Redshift and Postgres also support optional params to force an SSL connection:

type: postgres
params:
  ...
  ssl: true
  # Omit the below fields to use the default trusted CA from Mozilla
  caCert: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n..."
  clientCert: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n..."
  clientKey: "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n..."

Snowflake​

type: snowflake
params:
  account: abc123.us-east-1
  username: user
  password: password
  database: GROWTHBOOK
  schema: PUBLIC
  role: SYSADMIN
  warehouse: COMPUTE_WH

BigQuery​

You must first create a Service Account in Google with the following roles:

  • Data Viewer
  • Metadata Viewer
  • Job User

If you want GrowthBook to auto-discover credentials from environment variables or GCP metadata, use the following:

type: bigquery
params:
  authType: auto

If you prefer to pass in credentials directly, you can use this format instead:

type: bigquery
params:
  projectId: my-project
  clientEmail: growthbook@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  privateKey: -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nABC123\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n

Presto and TrinoDB​

type: presto
params:
  engine: presto # or "trino"
  host: localhost
  port: 8080
  username: user
  password: password
  catalog: growthbook
  schema: growthbook

Databricks​

type: databricks
params:
  host: dbc-123-abc.cloud.databricks.com
  port: 443
  path: /sql/1.0/warehouses/abc123
  token: dapi123abc

AWS Athena​

If you want GrowthBook to auto-discover credentials from environment variables or instance metadata, use the following format:

type: athena
params:
  authType: auto
  region: us-east-1
  database: growthbook
  bucketUri: aws-athena-query-results-growthbook
  workGroup: primary

If you prefer to specify access key and secret directly instead, use the following format:

type: athena
params:
  accessKeyId: AKIA123
  secretAccessKey: AB+cdef123
  region: us-east-1
  database: growthbook
  bucketUri: aws-athena-query-results-growthbook
  workGroup: primary

Data Source Settings​

The settings tell GrowthBook how to query your data. There are a couple queries you need to define plus an optional Python script to run queries from inside a Jupyter notebook:

type: postgres
params: ...
settings:
  # The different types of supported identifiers
  userIdTypes:
    - userIdType: user_id
      description: Logged-in user id
    - userIdType: anonymous_id
      description: Anonymous visitor id
  queries:
    # These queries returns experiment variation assignment info
    # One row every time a user was put into an experiment
    exposure:
      - id: user_id
        name: Logged-in user experiments
        userIdType: user_id
        query: >
          SELECT
            user_id,
            received_at as timestamp,
            experiment_id,
            variation_id,
            context_location_country as country
          FROM
            experiment_viewed
        # List additional columns you selected in your experimentsQuery
        # Can use these to drill down into experiment results
        dimensions:
          - country
    # These optional queries map between different types of identifiers
    identityJoins:
      - ids: ["user_id", "anonymous_id"]
        query: SELECT user_id, anonymous_id FROM identifies
  # Used when exporting experiment results to a Jupyter notebook
  # Define a `runQuery(sql)` function that returns a pandas data frame
  notebookRunQuery: >
    import os
    import psycopg2
    import pandas as pd
    from sqlalchemy import create_engine, text

    # Use environment variables or similar for passwords!
    password = os.getenv('POSTGRES_PW')
    connStr = f'postgresql+psycopg2://user:{password}@localhost'
    dbConnection = create_engine(connStr).connect();

    def runQuery(sql):
      return pd.read_sql(text(sql), dbConnection)

Organization Settings​

Some organization settings can also be controlled from config.yml.

Below are all of the currently supported settings:

organization:
  settings:
    # Minimum experiment length (in days) when importing past experiments. Default `6`
    pastExperimentsMinLength: 3
    # Number of days of historical data to use when analyzing metrics
    # (must be between 1 and 400, default `90`)
    metricAnalysisDays: 90
    # The min percent of users exposed to multiple variations in an
    # experiment before we start warning you (between 0 and 1, defaults to `0.01`)
    multipleExposureMinPercent: 0.01
    # Whether Regression Adjustment (CUPED) should be on or off by default how many
    # days to use. Can be overridden in your metric definitions if you wish.
    regressionAdjustmentEnabled: true
    regressionAdjustmentDays: 14
    # When we should auto-update experiment results
    updateSchedule:
      type: stale
      hours: 6

The updateSchedule setting has 3 types of values:

  • Never update automatically 
    updateSchedule:
      type: never
  • Update if data is X hours stale 
    updateSchedule:
      type: stale
      hours: 6
  • Update on a fixed Cron schedule 
    updateSchedule:
      type: cron
      cron: "0 */6 * * *"

Unit Dimensions​

Unit Dimensions let you join additional tables in order to drill down into your experiment results.

Dimensions only have 4 properties: name, datasource, userIdType, and SQL. The SQL query must return two columns: the identifier type and value.

Example:

name: Country
# Must match one of the datasources defined in config.yml
datasource: warehouse
userIdType: user_id
sql: SELECT user_id, country as value FROM users

By default, when using config.yml, it's not possible to create dimensions via the GrowthBook UI. Everything must be done directly in the config.yml file.

There is an optional environment variable you can specify to change this behavior:

ALLOW_CREATE_DIMENSIONS=true

This will let you create new dimensions via the UI. Dimensions defined in config.yml will be marked as "Official" and not editable, while ones defined via the UI will be editable.

Metrics (Deprecated)​

Legacy metrics can be defined in the config.yml file as well, although this behavior is deprecated.

If you want to version control metrics, the recommended approach is to integrate your version control system with our API instead. See a guide here for doing this with GitHub.

Below is an example of all the possible settings with comments for legacy metrics defined in config.yml:

name: Revenue per User
# Required. The data distribution and unit
type: revenue # or "binomial" or "count" or "duration"
# Required. Must match one of the datasources defined in config.yml
datasource: warehouse
# Description supports full markdown
description: This metric is **super** important
# For inverse metrics, the goal is to DECREASE the value (e.g. "page load time")
inverse: false
# When ignoring nulls, only users who convert are included in the denominator
# Setting to true here would change from "Revenue per User" to "Average Order Value"
ignoreNulls: false
# Which identifier types are supported for this metric
userIdTypes:
  - user
# Any user with a higher metric amount will be capped at this value
# In this case, if someone bought a $10,000 order, it would only be counted as $100
# Note: you can also specify `type: percentile` and a `value` between 0 and 1
# for percentile based capping
cappingSettings:
  type: absolute
  value: 100
# Control the date window for your metrics
windowSettings:
  type: conversion
  # Ignore all conversions within the first X hours of being put into an experiment.
  delayHours: 0
  # After the conversion delay (if any), wait this many hours for a conversion event.
  windowValue: 72
  windowUnit: hours
# The risk thresholds for the metric.
# If risk < $winRisk, it is highlighted green.
# If risk > $loseRisk, it is highlighted red.
# Otherwise, it's highlighted yellow.
winRisk: 0.0025
loseRisk: 0.0125
# Min number of conversions for an experiment variation before we reveal results
minSampleSize: 150
# The "suspicious" threshold. If the percent change for a variation is above this,
#   we hide the result and label it as suspicious.
# Default 0.5 = 50% change
maxPercentChange: 0.50
# The minimum change required for a result to considered a win or loss. If the percent
# change for a variation is below this threshold, we will consider an otherwise conclusive
# test a draw.
# Default 0.005 = 0.5% change
minPercentChange: 0.005
# Overrides for  Regression Adjustment (CUPED) at the metric level. To enforce these fields
# you must set regressionAdjustmentOverride to true.
# Leave the settings out of your config file to accept your organization level settings; or
# set regressionAdjustmentOverride to false.
regressionAdjustmentOverride: true
regressionAdjustmentEnabled: true
regressionAdjustmentDays: 14
# Arbitrary tags used to group related metrics
tags:
  - revenue
  - core

In addition to all of those settings, you also need to tell GrowthBook how to query the metric with SQL.

Depending on the other settings, the columns you need to select may differ slightly:

  • timestamp - always required
  • value - required unless type is set to "binomial"

Plus, you need to select a column for each identifier type the metric supports.

A full example:

type: duration
userIdTypes:
  - user_id
  - anonymous_id
sql: >
  SELECT
    created_at as timestamp,
    user_id,
    anonymous_id,
    duration as value
  FROM
    requests

And a simple binomial metric that only supports logged-in users:

type: binomial
userIdTypes:
  - user
sql: SELECT user_id, timestamp FROM orders

By default, if a user has more than 1 non-binomial metric row during an experiment, we sum the values together. You can override this behavior with the aggregation setting:

type: duration
userIdTypes:
  - user_id
sql: >
  SELECT
    created_at as timestamp,
    user_id,
    duration as value
  FROM
    requests
aggregation: MAX(value) # use MAX instead of the default SUM

Allow Creating Metrics in the UI​

By default, when using config.yml, it's not possible to create legacy metrics via the GrowthBook UI. Everything must be done directly in the config.yml file.

There is an optional environment variable you can specify to change this behavior:

ALLOW_CREATE_METRICS=true

This will let you create new metrics via the UI. Metrics defined in config.yml will be marked as "Official" and not editable, while ones defined via the UI will be editable.