Cubes

A cube represents a table of data in Cube.js. Cubes are typically declared in separate files with one cube per file. Within each cube are definitions of measures, dimensions, and joins between cubes. A cube should always be declared with a capital letter.

cube(`Users`, {
  sql: `select * from users`,

  joins: {
    Organizations: {
      relationship: `belongsTo`,
      sql: `${Users}.organization_id = ${Organizations}.id`
    }
  },

  measures: {
    count: {
      type: `count`,
      sql: `id`
    }
  },

  dimensions: {
    createdAt: {
      type: `time`,
      sql: `created_at`
    },

    country: {
      type: `string`,
      sql: `country`
    }
  }
});

Naming

There are certain rules to follow for a cube and cube member names. You can use only 0-9, _, and letter characters when naming a cube or a cube member. Names should always start with a letter.

As a convention cube names start with upper case letters and member names with lower case letters. As in case of JavaScript camel case is used for multi-word cube and member names.

Parameters

sql

The sql parameter specifies the SQL that will be used to generate a table that will be queried by a cube. It can be any valid SQL query, but usually it takes the form of a select * from my_table query. Please note that you don't need to use GROUP BY in a SQL query on the cube level. This query should return a plain table, without aggregations.

cube(`Orders`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`
});

You can reference others’ cubes SQL statement for code reuse.

cube(`Companies`, {
  sql: `SELECT users.company_name, users.company_id FROM ${Users.sql()} AS users`
});

title

Use title to change the display name of the cube. By default, Cube.js will humanize the cube's name, so for instance, UsersOrder would become Users Orders. If default humanizing doesn't work in your case, please use the title parameter. It is highly recommended to give human readable names to your cubes. It will help everyone on a team better understand the data structure and will help maintain a consistent set of definitions across an organization.

cube(`Orders`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`,

  title: `Product Orders`,
});

description

Use a description in your cubes to allow your team to better understand what this cube is about. It is a very simple and yet useful tool that gives a hint to everyone and makes sure data is interpreted correctly by users.

cube(`Orders`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`,

  title: `Product Orders`,
  description: `All orders related information`,
});

extends

You can extend cubes in order to reuse all declared members of a cube. In the example below, ExtendedOrderFacts will reuse the sql and count measures from OrderFacts:

cube(`OrderFacts`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`

  measures: {
    count: {
      type: `count`,
      sql: `id`
    }
  }
});

cube(`ExtendedOrderFacts`, {
  extends: OrderFacts,

  measures: {
    doubleCount: {
      type: `number`,
      sql: `${count} * 2`
    }
  }
});

refreshKey

Cube.js caching layer uses refreshKey queries to get the current version of content for a specific cube. If a query result changes, Cube.js will invalidate all queries that rely on that cube. If the refreshKey is not set, Cube.js will use the default strategy:

Check used pre-aggregations for query and use pre-aggregations refreshKey, if none pre-aggregations are used…
Check the max of time dimensions with updated in the name, if none exist…
Check the max of any existing time dimension, if none exist…
Check the row count for this cube.

The result of the refreshKey query itself is cached for 2 minutes by default. You can change it by passing the refreshKeyRenewalThreshold option when configuring the Cube.js Server.

You can use an existing timestamp from your tables. Make sure to select max timestamp in that case.

cube(`OrderFacts`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`

  refreshKey: {
    sql: `SELECT MAX(created_at) FROM orders`
  }
});

Or you can set it to be refreshed, for example every hour.

cube(`OrderFacts`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`

  refreshKey: {
    sql: `SELECT date_trunc('hour', NOW())`
  }
});

dataSource

Each cube in schema can have it's own dataSource name to support scenarios where data should be fetched from multiple databases. Value of dataSource parameter will be passed to dbType and driverFactory functions as part of context param. By default each cube has a default value for it's dataSource. To override it you can use:

cube(`OrderFacts`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders`,
  
  dataSource: `prod_db`
});

Context Variables

Filter Params

FILTER_PARAMS allows you to use filter values during SQL generation. You can add it for any valid SQL expression as in the case of dimensions.

It has the following structure:

FILTER_PARAMS.<CUBE_NAME>.<FILTER_NAME>.filter(expression)

The filter function accepts the expression, which could be either String or Function. See the examples below.

cube(`OrderFacts`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders WHERE ${FILTER_PARAMS.OrderFacts.date.filter('date')}`,

  dimensions: {
    date: {
      sql: `date`,
      type: `time`
    }
  }
});

This will generate the following SQL:

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE date >= '2018-01-01 00:00:00' and date <= '2018-12-31 23:59:59'

for the ['2018-01-01', '2018-12-31'] date range passed for the OrderFacts.date dimension.

You can also pass a function instead of an SQL expression as a filter() argument. This way you can add BigQuery sharding filtering for events, which will reduce your billing cost.

cube(`Events`, {
  sql: `
  SELECT * FROM schema.\`events*\`
  WHERE ${FILTER_PARAMS.Events.date.filter((from, to) =>
    `_TABLE_SUFFIX >= FORMAT_TIMESTAMP('%Y%m%d', TIMESTAMP(${from})) AND _TABLE_SUFFIX <= FORMAT_TIMESTAMP('%Y%m%d', TIMESTAMP(${to}))`
  )}
  `,

  dimensions: {
    date: {
      sql: `date`,
      type: `time`
    }
  }
});

User Context

USER_CONTEXT is a user security object that is passed by the Cube.js Client.

User context is suitable for the row level security implementation. For example, if you have an orders table that contains an email field you can restrict all queries to render results that belong only to the current user as follows:

cube(`Orders`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM orders WHERE ${USER_CONTEXT.email.filter('email')}`,

  dimensions: {
    date: {
      sql: `date`,
      type: `time`
    }
  }
});

Unsafe Value

NOTE: Use of this feature entails SQL injection security risk. Use it with caution.

You can access values of context variables directly in javascript in order to use it during your SQL generation. For example:

cube(`Orders`, {
  sql: `SELECT * FROM ${USER_CONTEXT.type.unsafeValue() === 'employee' ? 'employee' : 'public'}.orders`,

  dimensions: {
    date: {
      sql: `date`,
      type: `time`
    }
  }
});