Access Airflow command-line interface

Cloud Composer 1 | Cloud Composer 2

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.

About CLI syntax versions

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.

Supported Airflow CLI commands

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

Before you begin

You must have enough permissions to use the gcloud command-line tool with Cloud Composer and run Airflow CLI commands. For more information, see access control.
In Cloud Composer versions before 2.4.0, you need access to the control plane of your environment's cluster to run Airflow CLI commands.

Run Airflow CLI commands

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

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

Replace:

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

Subcommand arguments separator

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

Airflow 2

For Airflow 2 CLI syntax:

Specify compound CLI commands as a subcommand.
Specify any arguments for compound commands as subcommand arguments, after a -- separator.

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

Airflow 1

For Airflow 1.10 CLI syntax:

Specify CLI commands as a subcommand.
Specify any arguments after a -- separator.

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.

Example

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

Running commands on a private IP environment

To run Airflow CLI commands on a Private IP environment, run them on a machine that can access the GKE cluster's control plane endpoint. Your options may vary depending on your private cluster configuration.

If public endpoint access is disabled in your environment's cluster, you must run Airflow CLI commands from a VM in the same VPC network. Create a VM in your VPC network to enable this path.

If public endpoint access is enabled in your environment's cluster, you can also run Airflow CLI commands from a machine with a public IP address that is added to authorized networks. To enable access from your machine, add the external address of your machine to your environment's list of authorized networks.

Troubleshooting

No connectivity to the cluster control plane

When running gcloud composer environments run or kubectl commands, you might encounter the following error:

Get "https://<IP Address>/api?timeout=32s": dial tcp <IP Address>:443: i/o timeout"

Symptom: This error message indicates that there is no network connectivity from a computer where you run these commands.

Solution: Follow the guidelines presented in the Running commands on a private IP environment section or use the instructions available in the kubectl command times out section.