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Develop your Astro project

This is where you'll find information about:

  • Building and running a project
  • Deploying changes to a project
  • Adding dependencies to a project
  • Running on-build commands
  • Adding connections, pools, and environment variables locally

Prerequisites​

Build and run a project locally​

To run your Astro project locally, run the following command:

astro dev start

This command builds your project and spins up 4 Docker containers on your machine, each for a different Airflow component:

  • Postgres: Airflow's metadata database
  • Webserver: The Airflow component responsible for rendering the Airflow UI
  • Scheduler: The Airflow component responsible for monitoring and triggering tasks
  • Triggerer: The Airflow component responsible for running triggers and signaling tasks to resume when their conditions have been met. The triggerer is used exclusively for tasks that are run with deferrable operators.

Once the project builds, you can access the Airflow UI by going to http://localhost:8080/ and logging in with admin for both your username and password. You can also access your Postgres database at localhost:5432/postgres.

info

The Astro CLI is a wrapper around Docker Compose, a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. If you're familiar with Docker Compose, you'll recognize that the astro dev start command, for example, is functionally equivalent to docker compose start.

tip

If you see Error: cannot start, project already running when you run this command, it means your local Airflow environment is already running your project. If there are changes you'd like to apply to your project, see Restart your local environment.

Restart your local environment​

To restart your local Airflow environment, run the following command:

astro dev restart

These commands rebuild your image and restart the Docker containers running on your local machine with that new image. Alternatively, you can run just astro dev stop to stop your Docker containers without restarting or rebuilding your project.

Make changes to your project​

All Astro projects require you to specify a Debian-based Astro Runtime image in a Dockerfile. When you run your project locally or on Astro, all of your DAG code, packages, and configurations are built into a Docker image based on Astro Runtime.

Depending on the change you're making to your Astro project, you might have to rebuild your image to run your changes locally.

DAG code changes​

All changes made to files in the following directories will be live in your local Airflow environment as soon as you save them to your code editor:

  • dags
  • plugins
  • include

Once you save your changes, refresh the Airflow UI in your browser to see them render.

Environment changes​

All changes made to the following files require rebuilding your image:

  • packages.txt
  • Dockerfile
  • requirements.txt
  • airflow_settings.yaml

To rebuild your project after making a change to any of these files, you must restart your local environment.

Explore Airflow providers and modules​

As you customize your Astro project and expand your use case for Airflow, Astronomer recommends reviewing the Astronomer Registry, a library of Airflow modules, providers, and DAGs that serve as the building blocks for data pipelines.

The Astronomer Registry includes:

As you browse the Astronomer Registry, follow this document for instructions on how to install providers as Python packages and make other changes to your Astro project.

Add Python and OS-level packages​

To build Python and OS-level packages into your Astro project, add them to your requirements.txt and packages.txt files. Add Python packages to your requirements.txt and OS-level packages to your packages.txt file.

To pin a version of a package, use the following syntax:

<package-name>==<version>

To exclusively use Pymongo 3.7.2, for example, add the following line to your requirements.txt file:

pymongo==3.7.2

If you don't pin a package to a version, the latest version of the package that's publicly available is installed by default.

Once you've saved these packages in your project files, restart your local environment.

Confirm your package was installed​

If you added pymongo to your requirements.txt file, for example, you can confirm that it was properly installed by running:

astro dev bash --scheduler "pip freeze | grep pymongo"

This command outputs the version number of the package you specify after grep.

Add DAGs​

DAGs are stored in the dags folder of your Astro project. To add a DAG to your project, simply add its .py file to this folder.

Add DAG helper functions​

To build additional helper functions for DAGs into your Astro project, Astronomer recommend adding a folder with a set of files that can be used by Airflow DAGs.

  1. Add your directory of helper functions to your local project:

    .
    ├── airflow_settings.yaml
    ├── dags
    │   └── example-dag-basic.py
    │   └── example-dag-advanced.py
    ├── Dockerfile
    ├── helper_functions
    │   └── helper.py
    ├── include
    ├── tests
    │   └── test_dag_integrity.py
    ├── packages.txt
    ├── plugins
    │   └── example-plugin.py
    └── requirements.txt

    In this example, the directory is named helper_functions. You can give it any name.

  2. Restart your local environment.

  3. To confirm that your helper functions were successfully installed, run the following command:


     astro dev bash --scheduler "/bin/bash"

    The command should output a list of files in the scheduler container including your helper functions:


     $ astro dev bash --scheduler "/bin/bash"
     bash-4.4$ ls
     Dockerfile  airflow_settings.yaml  helper_functions  logs  plugins  unittests.cfg
     airflow.cfg dags  include  packages.txt  requirements.txt

Configure airflow_settings.yaml (Local development only)​

When you first initialize a new Astro project, a file called airflow_settings.yaml is automatically generated. With this file, you can configure and programmatically generate Airflow Connections, Pools, and Variables so that you don't have to manually redefine these values in the Airflow UI every time you restart your project.

As a security measure, airflow_settings.yaml works only in local environments. Once you deploy your project to a Deployment on Astro, the values in this file are not included. To manage Airflow secrets on Astro, Astronomer recommends configuring a secrets backend.

caution

If you are storing your project in a public directory or version control tool, Astronomer recommends adding this file to your .gitignore or equivalent secret management service.

Add Airflow connections, pools, and variables​

By default, the airflow_settings.yaml file includes the following template:

airflow:
  connections: ## conn_id and conn_type are required
    - conn_id: my_new_connection
      conn_type: postgres
      conn_host: 123.0.0.4
      conn_schema: airflow
      conn_login: user
      conn_password: pw
      conn_port: 5432
      conn_extra:
  pools: ## pool_name and pool_slot are required
    - pool_name: my_new_pool
      pool_slot: 5
      pool_description:
  variables: ## variable_name and variable_value are required
    - variable_name: my_variable
      variable_value: my_value

This template includes default values for all possible configurations. Make sure to replace these default values with your own and specify those that are required to avoid errors at build time. To add another Connection, Pool, or Variable, append it to this file within its corresponding section. To create another Variable, for example, add it under the existing variables section of the same file:

variables:
  - variable_name: <my-variable-1>
    variable_value: <my-variable-value>
  - variable_name: <my-variable-2>
    variable_value: <my-variable-value-2>

Save the modified airflow_settings.yaml file, start your local environment, and run: 

astro dev object import

When you access the Airflow UI locally, you should see these values in the Connections, Pools, and Variables tabs.

Run commands on build​

To run additional commands as your Astro project is built into a Docker image, add them to your Dockerfile as RUN commands. These commands run as the last step in the image build process.

For example, if you want to run ls when your image builds, your Dockerfile would look like this:

FROM quay.io/astronomer/astro-runtime:6.0.3
RUN ls

This is supported both on Astro and in the context of local development.

Set environment variables locally​

For local development, Astronomer recommends setting environment variables in your Astro project's .env file. You can then push your environment variables from the .env file to a Deployment using the Astro CLI.

If your environment variables contain sensitive information or credentials that you don't want exposed in plain-text, you can add your .env file to .gitignore when you deploy these changes to your version control tool.

  1. Open the .env file in your Astro project directory.

  2. Add your environment variables to the .env file or run astro deployment variable list --save to copy environment variables from an existing Deployment to the file.

    Use the following format when you set environment variables in your .env file:

    KEY=VALUE

    Environment variables should be in all-caps and not include spaces.

  3. Run astro dev start --env .env to rebuild your image.

  4. Optional. Run astro deployment variable create/update --load to export environment variables from your .env file to a Deployment. You can view and modify the exported environment variables in the Cloud UI page for your Deployment. To manage environment variables in the Cloud UI, see Environment Variables.

Confirm your environment variable changes​

Confirm that your environment variables were applied in a local environment by running the following commands:

astro dev bash --scheduler "/bin/bash && env"

These commands output all environment variables that are running locally. This includes both environment variables set in .env and environment variables set on Astro Runtime by default.

info

For local environments, the Astro CLI generates an airflow.cfg file at runtime based on the environment variables you set in your .env file. You can't create or modify airflow.cfg in an Astro project.

To view your local environment variables in the context of the generated Airflow configuration, run:

astro dev bash --scheduler "/bin/bash && cat airflow.cfg"

These commands output the contents of the generated airflow.cfg file, which lists your environment variables as human-readable configurations with inline comments.

Use multiple .env files​

The Astro CLI looks for .env by default, but if you want to specify multiple files, make .env a top-level directory and create sub-files within that folder.

A project with multiple .env files might look like the following:

my_project
  ├── Dockerfile
  └──  dags
    └── my_dag
  ├── plugins
    └── my_plugin
  ├── airflow_settings.yaml
  ├── .env
    └── dev.env
    └── prod.env

Install Python packages from private sources​

Python packages can be installed from both public and private locations into your image. To install packages listed on private PyPI indices or a private git-based repository, you need to complete additional configuration in your project.

Depending on where your private packages are stored, use one of the following setups to install these packages to an Astro project by customizing your Runtime image.

info

Deploying a custom Runtime image with a CI/CD pipeline requires additional configurations. For an example implementation, see GitHub Actions CI/CD templates.

Install Python packages from private GitHub repositories​

This topic provides instructions for building your Astro project with Python packages from a private GitHub repository.

Although this setup is based on GitHub, the high level steps can be completed with any hosted Git repository.

info

The following setup has been validated only with a single SSH key. You might need to modify this setup when using more than one SSH key per Docker image.

Prerequisites​

danger

If your organization enforces SAML single sign-on (SSO), you must first authorize your key to be used with that authentication method. For instructions, see GitHub documentation.

This setup assumes that each custom Python package is hosted within its own private GitHub repository. Installing multiple custom packages from a single private GitHub repository is not supported.

Step 1: Specify the private repository in your project​

To add a Python package from a private repository to your Astro project, specify the repository's SSH URL in your project's requirements.txt file. This URL should be formatted as:

git+ssh://git@github.com/<your-github-organization-name>/<your-private-repository>.git

For example, to install mypackage1 & mypackage2 from myorganization, as well as numpy v 1.22.1, you would add the following to your requirements.txt file:

git+ssh://git@github.com/myorganization/mypackage1.git
git+ssh://git@github.com/myorganization/mypackage2.git
numpy==1.22.1

This example assumes that the name of each of your Python packages is identical to the name of its corresponding GitHub repository. In other words,mypackage1 is both the name of the package and the name of the repository.

Step 2: Update Dockerfile​

  1. Optional. Copy any build steps you already have in your Dockerfile and save them for later.

  2. In your Dockerfile, add AS stage to the FROM line which specifies your Runtime image. For example, if you use Runtime 5.0.0, your FROM line would be:

    FROM quay.io/astronomer/astro-runtime:5.0.0-base AS stage1
    info

    If you currently use the default distribution of Astro Runtime, replace your existing image with its corresponding -base image as demonstrated in the example above. The -base distribution is built to be customizable and does not include default build logic. For more information on Astro Runtime distributions, see Distributions.

  3. After the FROM line specifying your Runtime image, add the following configuration:

    LABEL maintainer="Astronomer <humans@astronomer.io>"
    ARG BUILD_NUMBER=-1
    LABEL io.astronomer.docker=true
    LABEL io.astronomer.docker.build.number=$BUILD_NUMBER
    LABEL io.astronomer.docker.airflow.onbuild=true
    # Install Python and OS-Level Packages
    COPY packages.txt .
    RUN apt-get update && cat packages.txt | xargs apt-get install -y

    FROM stage1 AS stage2
    USER root
    RUN apt-get -y install git python3 openssh-client \
      && mkdir -p -m 0600 ~/.ssh && ssh-keyscan github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
    # Install Python Packages
    COPY requirements.txt .
    RUN --mount=type=ssh,id=github pip install --no-cache-dir -q -r requirements.txt

    FROM stage1 AS stage3
    # Copy requirements directory
    COPY --from=stage2 /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
    COPY --from=stage2 /usr/local/bin /home/astro/.local/bin
    ENV PATH="/home/astro/.local/bin:$PATH"

    COPY . .

    In order, these commands:

    • Install any OS-level packages specified in packages.txt.
    • Securely mount your SSH key at build time. This ensures that the key itself is not stored in the resulting Docker image filesystem or metadata.
    • Install Python-level packages from your private repository as specified in your requirements.txt file.
    tip

    This example Dockerfile assumes Python 3.9, but some versions of Astro Runtime may be based on a different version of Python. If your image is based on a version of Python that is not 3.9, replace python 3.9 in the COPY commands listed under the ## Copy requirements directory section of your Dockerfile with the correct Python version.

    To identify the Python version in your Astro Runtime image, run:

    docker run quay.io/astronomer/astro-runtime:<runtime-version>-base python --version

    Make sure to replace <runtime-version> with your own.

    info

    If your repository is hosted somewhere other than GitHub, replace the domain in the ssh-keyscan command with the domain where the package is hosted.

  4. Optional. If you had any other commands in your original Dockerfile, add them after the line FROM stage1 AS stage3.

Step 3: Build a custom Docker image​

  1. Run the following command to automatically generate a unique image name:

    image_name=astro-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)

  2. Run the following command to create a new Docker image from your Dockerfile. Replace <ssh-key> with your SSH private key file name.

    DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -f Dockerfile --progress=plain --ssh=github="$HOME/.ssh/<ssh-key>" -t $image_name .

  3. Optional. Test your DAGs locally. See Build and Run a Project Locally.

  4. Deploy the image using the Astro CLI:

    astro deploy --image-name $image_name

Your Astro project can now utilize Python packages from your private GitHub repository.