dac validate

Validate dashboard definitions without executing any queries by default. Catches structural and configuration errors before you run the server.

dac validate [dir] [flags]

Flags

Flag	Alias	Type	Default	Description
--dir	-d	string	.	Dashboard definitions directory
--with-database		bool	false	Dry-run widget queries against configured database connections

Examples

# Validate all dashboards in current directory
dac validate

# Validate dashboards in a specific directory
dac validate --dir ./dashboards

# Equivalent positional form
dac validate ./dashboards

# Validate dashboards and dry-run every data query
dac validate --with-database

What It Checks

• Dashboard: name is required, at least one row
• Schemas: YAML dashboards, semantic models, and themes match the v1 Bruin schema for their file type; explicit schema values must be v1
• Rows: at least one widget per row
• Widgets: type and name are required
• Grid: column spans are 1-12, row totals don't exceed 12
• Query references: named queries referenced by widgets exist in the queries map
• Filter types: must be select, date-range, or text
• Chart types: valid chart type names
• Semantic layer:
  • model files under semantic/ have a name and source.table
  • metric expressions are present and derived metric references exist
  • referenced dashboard models or aliases exist
  • semantic widgets reference valid metrics, dimensions, segments, filters, and sort fields
  • invalid semantic models only fail dashboards that reference them

Database Dry Runs

--with-database validates compiled widget SQL against your configured Bruin connections without returning dashboard rows.

DAC uses bruin query --dry-run when the Bruin CLI supports it. If a backend only exposes regular execution, DAC falls back to EXPLAIN <query>. DAC refuses potentially mutating SQL before dry-running; only read-only SELECT, WITH, VALUES, SHOW, DESCRIBE, and EXPLAIN statements are accepted.

For TSX dashboards, load-time query() calls are dry-run validated and return empty rows during validation. Use dac check when you need to execute queries and verify returned result shapes.

Exit Code

• 0 — all dashboards valid
• 1 — validation errors found