Access Airflow command-line interface

Cloud Composer 3 | Cloud Composer 2 | Cloud Composer 1

Apache Airflow has a command-line interface (CLI) that you can use to perform tasks such as triggering and managing DAGs, getting information about DAG runs and tasks, adding and deleting connections and users.

Supported Airflow CLI commands

Airflow in Cloud Composer 1 provides two different syntaxes for CLI commands:

• Airflow 1.10 CLI syntax, available in Cloud Composer environments with Airflow 1.10.

• Airflow 2 CLI syntax, available Cloud Composer environments with Airflow 2.

For a full list of supported Airflow CLI commands, see the reference for the gcloud composer environments run command.

Before you begin

• You must have permissions to use Google Cloud CLI with Cloud Composer and run Airflow CLI commands.

  Caution: Users with the composer.environments.executeairflowcommand permission can execute Python code available to Airflow components on behalf of the environment's service account. For more information, see Access control.

• Airflow CLI commands consume the environments.executeAirflowCommand quota.

  Important: If you want to trigger a large number of DAGs, we recommend to do it with Airflow REST API. Triggering DAGs through Google Cloud CLI might cause your environment to reach the quota limit, and as a result, Airflow CLI commands will no longer be executed.

Run Airflow CLI commands

To run Airflow CLI commands in your environments, use gcloud CLI:

gcloud composer environments run ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
    --location LOCATION \
    SUBCOMMAND \
    -- SUBCOMMAND_ARGUMENTS

Replace the following :

• ENVIRONMENT_NAME: the name of your environment.
• LOCATION: the region where the environment is located.
• SUBCOMMAND: one of the supported Airflow CLI commands.
• SUBCOMMAND_ARGUMENTS with arguments for the Airflow CLI command.

Sub-command arguments separator

Separate the arguments for the specified Airflow CLI command with --:

Airflow 2

• Specify compound CLI commands as a sub-command.
• Specify any arguments for compound commands as sub-command arguments, after a -- separator.

Example:

gcloud composer environments run example-environment \
    dags list -- --output=json

Airflow 1

• Specify CLI commands as a sub-command.
• Specify any arguments after a -- separator.

Example:

gcloud composer environments run example-environment \
    list_dags -- --report

Default location

Most gcloud composer commands require a location. You can specify the location with the --location flag, or by setting the default location.

For example, to trigger a DAG named sample_quickstart with the ID 5077 in your Cloud Composer environment:

Airflow 2

gcloud composer environments run example-environment \
    --location us-central1 dags trigger -- sample_quickstart \
    --run-id=5077

Airflow 1

gcloud composer environments run example-environment \
    --location us-central1 trigger_dag -- sample_quickstart \
    --run_id=5077

What's next

• Access Airflow UI
• Access control (Airflow CLI)