> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://lightdash-mintlify-cccf65ca.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Lightdash Validate

> You can check to see if your changes break any of the content in your project using `lightdash validate`. This command will run the validator which will return a list of content in your project that is broken and details about the errors.

You can trigger a validation on a project using the Lightdash CLI so you can check locally if your changes will break anything. You can also add `lightdash validate` to your [GitHub Actions](#configure-github-actions) so changes can't be merged unless they pass the validation.

## Usage

<Frame>
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/lightdash-mintlify-cccf65ca/WcLen7Ssa93pK0gS/images/guides/cli/cli-validate-a18f39c4e5dc0eab842d963fe17188a0.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=WcLen7Ssa93pK0gS&q=85&s=6719eeccc5c3ed62add4f10df83b778d" alt="CLI validate" width="1148" height="262" data-path="images/guides/cli/cli-validate-a18f39c4e5dc0eab842d963fe17188a0.png" />
</Frame>

### Validate your changes against your project by running lightdash validate

You can run `lightdash validate` to check if your changes break any of the content in production. By default, `lightdash validate` will check your changes against the content in the project you've selected on the CLI. You can change your project using `lightdash config set-project`.

```bash theme={null}
lightdash validate
```

Optionally you can use the `--preview` argument to validate your last preview environment created from the CLI.

You will get a list of errors if your local files are going to break some content on your project. These errors will not be reflected on the validation table on Lightdash settings.

### Validate any project using the project UUID

You can run a validation on any project by specifying the project UUID in the `lightdash validate` command.

```bash theme={null}
lightdash validate --project <project uuid>
```

**Note:** you can get your project UUID from the Lightdash URL by selecting the ID after the `projects/`

<Frame>
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/lightdash-mintlify-cccf65ca/xnj0RWoRyoyarXfO/images/references/cli-lightdash-help-86d9d11f57ca516a722c0dfcf8f2919a.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=xnj0RWoRyoyarXfO&q=85&s=301953c707dbae2b76ad34816af90968" alt="" width="1870" height="1408" data-path="images/references/cli-lightdash-help-86d9d11f57ca516a722c0dfcf8f2919a.png" />
</Frame>

### Validate only specific elements of your project

You can select which parts of your project you would like to validate using the `--only` argument.

```bash theme={null}
lightdash validate --only tables charts dashboards
```

Available options:

* `tables`

* `charts`

* `dashboards`

## Configure Github actions

This command will create a preview environment, and then validate this preview by specifying `--preview` on the validate command.`lightdash validate` will return an error (return code 1) if there is at least 1 validation error on your project. You can use this output to block a deploy on Github actions like this

```yaml theme={null}
- name: Start preview
  run: lightdash start-preview
- name: Validate preview
  run: lightdash validate --preview
```

To learn more about setting up GitHub actions for Lightdash, check out the docs [here](/references/integrations/dbt-projects#1-automatically%3A-deploy-your-changes-to-lightdash-using-a-github-action).