Airflow has a simple plugin manager built-in that can integrate external features to its core by simply dropping files in your $AIRFLOW_HOME/plugins
folder.
The python modules in the plugins
folder get imported, and hooks, operators, sensors, macros, executors and web views get integrated to Airflow’s main collections and become available for use.
Airflow offers a generic toolbox for working with data. Different organizations have different stacks and different needs. Using Airflow plugins can be a way for companies to customize their Airflow installation to reflect their ecosystem.
Plugins can be used as an easy way to write, share and activate new sets of features.
There’s also a need for a set of more complex applications to interact with different flavors of data and metadata.
Examples:
A set of tools to parse Hive logs and expose Hive metadata (CPU /IO / phases/ skew /…)
An anomaly detection framework, allowing people to collect metrics, set thresholds and alerts
An auditing tool, helping understand who accesses what
A config-driven SLA monitoring tool, allowing you to set monitored tables and at what time they should land, alert people, and expose visualizations of outages
…
Airflow has many components that can be reused when building an application:
A web server you can use to render your views
A metadata database to store your models
Access to your databases, and knowledge of how to connect to them
An array of workers that your application can push workload to
Airflow is deployed, you can just piggy back on its deployment logistics
Basic charting capabilities, underlying libraries and abstractions
To create a plugin you will need to derive the airflow.plugins_manager.AirflowPlugin
class and reference the objects you want to plug into Airflow. Here’s what the class you need to derive looks like:
class AirflowPlugin(object): # The name of your plugin (str) name = None # A list of class(es) derived from BaseOperator operators = [] # A list of class(es) derived from BaseSensorOperator sensors = [] # A list of class(es) derived from BaseHook hooks = [] # A list of class(es) derived from BaseExecutor executors = [] # A list of references to inject into the macros namespace macros = [] # A list of objects created from a class derived # from flask_admin.BaseView admin_views = [] # A list of Blueprint object created from flask.Blueprint. For use with the flask_admin based GUI flask_blueprints = [] # A list of menu links (flask_admin.base.MenuLink). For use with the flask_admin based GUI menu_links = [] # A list of dictionaries containing FlaskAppBuilder BaseView object and some metadata. See example below appbuilder_views = [] # A list of dictionaries containing FlaskAppBuilder BaseView object and some metadata. See example below appbuilder_menu_items = [] # A list of global operator extra links that can redirect users to # external systems. These extra links will be available on the # task page in the form of buttons. # # Note: the global operator extra link can be overridden at each # operator level. global_operator_extra_links = []
You can derive it by inheritance (please refer to the example below). Please note name
inside this class must be specified.
After the plugin is imported into Airflow, you can invoke it using statement like
from airflow.{type, like "operators", "sensors"}.{name specificed inside the plugin class} import *
When you write your own plugins, make sure you understand them well. There are some essential properties for each type of plugin. For example,
For Operator
plugin, an execute
method is compulsory.
For Sensor
plugin, a poke
method returning a Boolean value is compulsory.
Make sure you restart the webserver and scheduler after making changes to plugins so that they take effect.
The code below defines a plugin that injects a set of dummy object definitions in Airflow.
# This is the class you derive to create a plugin from airflow.plugins_manager import AirflowPlugin from flask import Blueprint from flask_admin import BaseView, expose from flask_admin.base import MenuLink # Importing base classes that we need to derive from airflow.hooks.base_hook import BaseHook from airflow.models import BaseOperator from airflow.models.baseoperator import BaseOperatorLink from airflow.sensors.base_sensor_operator import BaseSensorOperator from airflow.executors.base_executor import BaseExecutor # Will show up under airflow.hooks.test_plugin.PluginHook class PluginHook(BaseHook): pass # Will show up under airflow.operators.test_plugin.PluginOperator class PluginOperator(BaseOperator): pass # Will show up under airflow.sensors.test_plugin.PluginSensorOperator class PluginSensorOperator(BaseSensorOperator): pass # Will show up under airflow.executors.test_plugin.PluginExecutor class PluginExecutor(BaseExecutor): pass # Will show up under airflow.macros.test_plugin.plugin_macro # and in templates through {{ macros.test_plugin.plugin_macro }} def plugin_macro(): pass # Creating a flask admin BaseView class TestView(BaseView): @expose('/') def test(self): # in this example, put your test_plugin/test.html template at airflow/plugins/templates/test_plugin/test.html return self.render("test_plugin/test.html", content="Hello galaxy!") v = TestView(category="Test Plugin", name="Test View") # Creating a flask blueprint to integrate the templates and static folder bp = Blueprint( "test_plugin", __name__, template_folder='templates', # registers airflow/plugins/templates as a Jinja template folder static_folder='static', static_url_path='/static/test_plugin') ml = MenuLink( category='Test Plugin', name='Test Menu Link', url='https://airflow.apache.org/') # Creating a flask appbuilder BaseView class TestAppBuilderBaseView(AppBuilderBaseView): @expose("/") def test(self): return self.render("test_plugin/test.html", content="Hello galaxy!") v_appbuilder_view = TestAppBuilderBaseView() v_appbuilder_package = {"name": "Test View", "category": "Test Plugin", "view": v_appbuilder_view} # Creating a flask appbuilder Menu Item appbuilder_mitem = {"name": "Google", "category": "Search", "category_icon": "fa-th", "href": "https://www.google.com"} # A global operator extra link that redirect you to # task logs stored in S3 class S3LogLink(BaseOperatorLink): name = 'S3' def get_link(self, operator, dttm): return 'https://s3.amazonaws.com/airflow-logs/{dag_id}/{task_id}/{execution_date}'.format( dag_id=operator.dag_id, task_id=operator.task_id, execution_date=dttm, ) # Defining the plugin class class AirflowTestPlugin(AirflowPlugin): name = "test_plugin" operators = [PluginOperator] sensors = [PluginSensorOperator] hooks = [PluginHook] executors = [PluginExecutor] macros = [plugin_macro] admin_views = [v] flask_blueprints = [bp] menu_links = [ml] appbuilder_views = [v_appbuilder_package] appbuilder_menu_items = [appbuilder_mitem] global_operator_extra_links = [S3LogLink(),]
Airflow 1.10 introduced role based views using FlaskAppBuilder. You can configure which UI is used by setting rbac = True. To support plugin views and links for both versions of the UI and maintain backwards compatibility, the fields appbuilder_views and appbuilder_menu_items were added to the AirflowTestPlugin class.
It is possible to load plugins via setuptools entrypoint mechanism. To do this link your plugin using an entrypoint in your package. If the package is installed, airflow will automatically load the registered plugins from the entrypoint list.
_Note_: Neither the entrypoint name (eg, my_plugin) nor the name of the plugin class will contribute towards the module and class name of the plugin itself. The structure is determined byairflow.plugins_manager.AirflowPlugin.name and the class name of the plugin component with the pattern airflow.{component}.{name}.{component_class_name}.
# my_package/my_plugin.py from airflow.plugins_manager import AirflowPlugin from airflow.models import BaseOperator from airflow.hooks.base_hook import BaseHook class MyOperator(BaseOperator): pass class MyHook(BaseHook): pass class MyAirflowPlugin(AirflowPlugin): name = 'my_namespace' operators = [MyOperator] hooks = [MyHook]
from setuptools import setup setup( name="my-package", ... entry_points = { 'airflow.plugins': [ 'my_plugin = my_package.my_plugin:MyAirflowPlugin' ] } )
airflow.hooks.my_namespace.MyHook
airflow.operators.my_namespace.MyOperator