dbt env macro produces wrong output - dbt

Question

i've encountered strange problem with env var.
Here's my profiles.yml file
project:
outputs:
prod:
type: postgres
threads: 4
host: my_host
port: 5432
user: "{{ env_var('DBT_USER') }}"
pass: "{{ env_var('DBT_PASS') }}"
dbname: my_db
schema: my_schema
target: prod
Here's my env variables:
echo $DBT_USER;
my_user
echo $DBT_PASS;
my_password
dbt-debug output:
connection to server at "my_host", port 5432 failed: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "my_user"
But if I change
pass: "{{ env_var('DBT_PASS') }}"
to
my_password
in profiles.yml, dbt-debug shows no error.
dbt version is 1.0.1.
What am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

#dcpt The way you used the env_var function looks correct per the env_var docs but there's two things I can think of.
Are you restarting your shell after setting your env variables? Maybe there's something about the CLI session that needs to be renewed after a profiles.yml or env_var change.
I think that you need to layout your profiles.yml with target as a higher header? Looking at the example here on profiles.yml it looks like:
profiles.yml
<profile-name>:
target: <target-name>
outputs:
<target-name>:
type: <bigquery | postgres | redshift | snowflake | other>
schema: <schema_identifier>
threads: <natural_number>
But you have your target: at the bottom? Is that supposed to be an additional target definition or should it be higher above your prod: tag.