Kedro starters

Kedro starters are used to create projects that contain code to run as-is, or to adapt and extend. They provide pre-defined example code and configuration that can be reused, for example:

  • As example code for a typical Kedro project

  • To add a docker-compose setup to launch Kedro next to a monitoring stack

  • To add deployment scripts and CI/CD setup for your targeted infrastructure

A Kedro starter is a Cookiecutter template that contains the boilerplate code for a Kedro project. You can create your own starters for reuse within a project or team, as described in the documentation about how to create a Kedro starter.

How to use Kedro starters

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

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

Note

path-to-starter could be a local directory or a VCS repository, as long as Cookiecutter supports it.

To create a project using the PySpark starter:

kedro new --starter=pyspark

If no starter is provided to kedro new, the default Kedro template will be used, as documented in “Creating a new project”.

Starter aliases

We provide aliases for common starters maintained by the Kedro team so that users don’t have to specify the full path. For example, to use the PySpark starter to create a project:

kedro new --starter=pyspark

To list all the aliases we support:

kedro starter list

List of official starters

The Kedro team maintains the following starters to bootstrap new Kedro projects:

Starter versioning

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

kedro new --starter=pyspark --checkout=0.1.0

The --checkout value points 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 in interactive mode

By default, when you create a new project using a starter, kedro new launches by asking you to enter the project_name.

  • project_name - A human readable name for your new project

Kedro will then automatically generate the following two variables from the entered project_name:

  • repo_name - A name for the directory that holds your project repository

  • python_package - A Python package name for your project package (see Python package naming conventions)

This mode assumes that the starter requires no additional configuration variables.

Use a starter with a configuration file

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

kedro new --config=my_kedro_pyspark_project.yml --starter=pyspark

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