Common use cases¶

Kedro provides several built-in mechanisms that let you extend its behaviour. This document explains how to choose which mechanism to use for common scenarios.

Use Case 1: How to add extra behaviour to Kedro's execution timeline¶

The execution timeline of a Kedro pipeline is a sequence of actions performed by various Kedro library components. Examples include the kedro-datasets documentation, kedro.io.DataCatalog, kedro.pipeline.pipeline.Pipeline, kedro.pipeline.node.Node, and kedro.framework.context.KedroContext.

At different points in the lifecycle of these components, you might want to add extra behaviour. For example, you could add extra computation for profiling purposes before and after a node runs. You might also insert behaviour around the I/O actions of a dataset, namely the load and save actions.

You can do this with Hooks by defining the extra behaviour and when in the execution timeline it should be introduced.

Use Case 2: How to integrate Kedro with additional data sources¶

You can use Datasets to interface with a range of data sources. If the data source you plan to use is not supported out of the box by Kedro, you can create a custom dataset.

Use Case 3: How to add or change CLI commands¶

If you want to customise a built-in Kedro command, such as kedro run, for a specific project, add a cli.py file that defines a custom run() function. Add the cli.py file at the same level as settings.py, which in a default project is the src/PROJECT_NAME directory. See the template for the cli.py file.

If you want to customise a Kedro command from a command group, such as kedro pipeline or kedro jupyter, you need to import the corresponding click command group from the Kedro framework cli. For kedro pipeline commands this would be from kedro.framework.cli.pipeline import pipeline, and for kedro jupyter commands from kedro.framework.cli.jupyter import jupyter. Note: you must still add the cli click group from the snippet above, even if you do not change it.

You can then add or overwrite any command by adding it to the click group, as in the snippet below:

@jupyter.command("notebook")
@env_option(
    help="Open a notebook"
)
def notebook_run(...):
    == ADD YOUR CUSTOM NOTEBOOK COMMAND CODE HERE ==

To inject additional CLI commands intended to be reused across projects, see our plugin system. An example of one such command is the kedro viz run command introduced by the Kedro-Viz plugin. This command is intended to work on every Kedro project which is why it comes from a standalone plugin.

Use Case 4: How to customise the initial boilerplate of your project¶

Sometimes you might want to tailor the starting boilerplate of a Kedro project to your specific needs. For example, your organisation might have a standard CI script that you want to include in every new Kedro project. To this end, see the guide for creating Kedro starters.