Prefect REST API

Overview

The Prefect REST API is hosted by the Orion Server or Prefect Cloud.

A complete reference for the API is available at the bottom of this document.

Additionally, the reference can be viewed by visiting /docs of the API server. For example, http://localhost:4200/docs if running the API with prefect orion start.

OpenAPI

The Prefect REST API can be fully described with an OpenAPI 3.0 compliant document. OpenAPI is a standard specification for describing REST APIs.

To generate Prefect's complete OpenAPI document, run the following commands in an interactive Python session:

from prefect.orion.api.server import create_app

app = create_app()
openapi_doc = app.openapi()

This document allows you to generate your own API client, explore the API using an API inspection tool, or write tests to ensure API compliance.

REST Guidelines

The Prefect REST API adheres to the following guidelines:

• Collection names are pluralized (e.g., /flows, /runs)
• We indicate variable placeholders with colons (e.g., GET /flows/:id)
• We use snake case for route names (e.g. GET /task_runs)
• We avoid nested resources unless there is no possibility of accessing the child resource outside the parent context. For example, we query /task_runs with a flow run filter instead of accessing /flow_runs/:id/task_runs.
• The API is hosted with an /api/:version prefix that (optionally) allows versioning in the future. By convention, we treat that as part of the base URL and do not include that in API examples
• Filtering, sorting, and pagination parameters are provided in the request body of POST requests where applicable
  • Pagination parameters are limit and offset
  • Sorting is specified with a single sort parameter
  • See more information on filtering below
• HTTP verbs:
  • GET, PUT and DELETE requests are always idempotent; POST and PATCH are not guaranteed to be idempotent
  • GET requests can not receive information from the request body
  • POST requests can receive information from the request body
  • POST /collection creates a new member of the collection
  • GET /collection lists all members of the collection
  • GET /collection/:id gets a specific member of the collection by ID
  • DELETE /collection/:id deletes a specific member of the collection
  • PUT /collection/:id creates or replaces a specific member of the collection
  • PATCH /collection/:id partially updates a specific member of the collection
  • POST /collection/action is how we implement non-CRUD actions. For example, to set a flow run's state, we use POST /flow_runs/:id/set_state.
  • POST /collection/action may also be used for read-only queries. This is to allow us to send complex arguments as body arguments (which often can not be done via GET). Examples include POST /flow_runs/filter, POST /flow_runs/count, and POST /flow_runs/history.

Filtering

Objects can be filtered by providing filter criteria in the body of a POST request. When multiple criteria are specified, logical AND will be applied to the criteria.

Filter criteria are structured as follows

{
    "objects": {
        "object_field": {
            "field_operator_": <field_value>
        }
    }
}

where

objects is the name of the collection to filter over (e.g. flows). The collection can be either the object being queried for (e.g. flows for POST /flows/filter) or a related object (e.g. flow_runs for POST /flows/filter).

object_field is the name of the field over which to filter (e.g. name for flows). Note that some objects may have nested object fields, such as {flow_run: {state: {type: {any_: []}}}}

field_operator_ is the operator to apply to a field when filtering. Common examples include:

• any_: return objects where this field matches any of the following values
• is_null_: return objects where this field is or is not null
• eq_: return objects where this field is equal to the following value
• all_: return objects where this field matches all of the following values
• before_: return objects where this datetime field is less than or equal to the following value
• after_: return objects where this datetime field is greater than or equal to the following value

For example, to query for flows with the tag "database" and failed flow runs, POST /flows/filter with the following request body

{
    "flows": {
        "tags": {
            "all_": ["database"]
        }
    },
    "flow_runs": {
        "state": {
            "type": {
              "any_": ["FAILED"]
            }
        }
    }
}

Prefect REST API Reference

The following REST API reference was automatically generated using Swagger UI.