Airflow XComs

External

• https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/concepts/xcoms.html
• https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/concepts/taskflow.html
• https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/2.0.0/concepts.html#xcoms

Internal

• Airflow Concepts

Overview

XComs is one of the methods tasks use to exchange data.

Concepts

Tasks communicate using inputs and outputs, and the XComs ("cross-communications") mechanism is an implementation of this pattern. By default, tasks are entirely isolated and may be running on entirely different machines so when they exchange data, the data must be serializable.

An XCom is identified by a key, which is the XCom's name, as well as the task_id and dag_id it came from. The XCom can have any serializable value, however it must be relatively small. If there is need to exchange large amounts of data, this is usually done uploading and downloading large files from a storage service.

XComs are explicitly “pushed” and “pulled” to/from their storage using the xcom_push() and xcom_pull() methods on task instances. For more details see Programming Model below.

The XComs are stored in the xcom table and they need to be explicitly deleted after use, otherwise they'll leak in the table.

Variables are an alternative mechanism for tasks to share data. However, variables are global and should be used for overall configuration that covers the entire installation. To pass data to and from tasks, XComs are preferable.

Also see DAG run execution context.

When you call a TaskFlow function in the DAG file, rather than executing it, you will get an object representing the XCom for the result (an XComArg, that you can use as inputs to downstream tasks and operators.

Programming Model

Also see:

Airflow Programming Model

@task
def task_a():
    print("executing task A")

Other examples:

https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/main/airflow/example_dags/example_xcom.py

Backends

https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/concepts/xcoms.html#custom-xcom-backends