PR - lowercase except values in star()

[reidwil-jb]

resolves #402

This is a:

• bug fix PR with no breaking changes — please ensure the base branch is master
• new functionality — please ensure the base branch is the latest dev/ branch
• a breaking change — please ensure the base branch is the latest dev/ branch

Description & motivation

This PR allows a user to put their except values in whatever case they want when calling them within dbt_utils.star()

{{ dbt_utils.star(from=ref('my_model', except=["col_a","col_b"]) == {{ dbt_utils.star(from=ref('my_model', except=["COL_A","Col_B"])

Checklist

• I have verified that these changes work locally on the following warehouses (Note: it's okay if you do not have access to all warehouses, this helps us understand what has been covered)
  • BigQuery
  • Postgres
  • Redshift
  • Snowflake
• I have "dispatched" any new macro(s) so non-core adapters can also use them (e.g. the star() source)
• I have updated the README.md (if applicable)
• I have added tests & descriptions to my models (and macros if applicable)
• I have added an entry to CHANGELOG.md

[ttusing]

I recently ran into something similar when using include in union_relations - my lowercase field names were excluded from not matching the uppercase version.

[reidwil-jb]

@ttusing Makes sense - would you want to push the necessary changes to this PR?

[ttusing]

Hmm, it seems like this casing difficulty is likely to apply to every time columns are compared in Jinja. I wonder if the best way to fix this is to update all instances of column set comparisons. I'll move this discussion to the issue ticket and look over things a bit more.

[jasnonaz]

Hi Reid - thank you so much for the fantastic PR!! I'm going to remove the comment that's no longer relevant than get this merged.

[jasnonaz]

Great work - thank you!!

[wuservices]

I think there's a bug here. I just upgraded and have a column missing.

Does except|lower convert a list to a string?

Before, I think something like this was running for me:
'seo_path' not in ['keywords', 'meta_description', 'seo_path_segment_keywords'] (True)

But now I think it may run as:
'seo_path' not in "['keywords', 'meta_description', 'seo_path_segment_keywords']" (False)

I was going to spend some more time looking at this tomorrow before filing an issue and repro as I'm pretty new to Python and Jinja, but wanted to share now in case this already sounds like this is the issue.

[EPNickBosma]

I think there's a bug here. I just upgraded and have a column missing.

We're noticing this too. I've written it up here.

[jasnonaz]

Thanks for the heads up @wuservices @EPNickBosma

Can you check out #418 and let me know if this fixes the error you are seeing?