How to connect to Apache Airflow Data from IntelliJ

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Integrate connectivity to Apache Airflow data with wizards in IntelliJ.

The CData JDBC Driver for Apache Airflow enables you to access Apache Airflow as a JDBC data source, providing integration with rapid development tools in IDEs. This article shows how to use the data source configuration wizard to connect to Apache Airflow data in IntelliJ.

Create a JBDC Data Source for Apache Airflow

Follow the steps below to add the driver JAR and define connection properties required to connect to Apache Airflow data.

  1. In the Data Sources window, right-click and then click Add Data Source -> DB Data Source.
  2. In the Data Source Properties dialog that appears, the following properties are required:

    • JDBC Driver Files: Click the button next to this menu to add the JDBC Driver file cdata.jdbc.api.jar, located in the installation directory.
    • JDBC Driver Class: In this menu, select cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver from the list.
    • Database URL: Enter the connection URL in the JDBC URL property. The URL must start with jdbc:api: and includes connection properties separated with semicolons.

      Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the ApacheAirflow Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\ApacheAirflow.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for ApacheAirflow (see below).

      ApacheAirflow API Profile Settings

      Apache Airflow 3 uses JWT Bearer tokens for API authentication. You can generate a token from the Airflow web UI under Settings or via the Airflow CLI using airflow users create and the /api/v2/auth/token endpoint. Note that this profile targets Apache Airflow 3.x using the /api/v2 REST API. The legacy /api/v1 endpoint used by Airflow 2.x is not supported.

      After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

      • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
      • APIKey: Set this to your Apache Airflow JWT Bearer token.
      • Server: Set this to the base URL of your Airflow instance (e.g. http://localhost:8080).

      Built-in Connection String Designer

      For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Apache Airflow JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

      
      java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar
      

      Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

      Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

      A typical JDBC URL is the following:

      jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\ApacheAirflow.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_jwt_token;Server=http://localhost:8080';
The JDBC data source. (Salesforce is shown.)

Edit and Save Apache Airflow Data

To discover schema information, right-click the data source you just created and click Refresh Tables. To query a table, right-click it and then click Open Tables Editor.

The results of a query in IntelliJ. (Salesforce is shown.)

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Apache Airflow with the API Driver

Connect to Apache Airflow