README.md

caching_flow_runner

An attempt to implement some simple data lineage for prefect flows (Very WIP).

Uses a CachedFlowRunner and CachedTaskRunner to record input and output hashes for all tasks that run, overriding TaskRunner.check_target to also check for matching hashes.

Why?

Some background can be found at Prefect #4935. I wanted to see what we could possibly implement in a short time, as well as get more familiar with Prefects task/flow running code. It could also serve as a reference or point of discussion if Prefect were to ever implement this in the core code base.

Install

pip install git+https://github.com/limx0/caching_flow_runner.git

Usage

from functools import partial
from caching_flow_runner.flow_runner import CachedFlowRunner
from caching_flow_runner.lock_storage import LockStore

# Create flow as normal
flow = MyFlow(...) 

# Create a LockStore to persist lock data
store = LockStore("memory://") # or LockStore("/path/to/directory")

# Run with CachedFlowRunner
flow.run(runner_cls=partial(CachedFlowRunner, lock_store=store))

To do:

• Test mapping tasks
• Test looping tasks
  • this basically works, although you would probably want better state being passed around to generate the cache locations per loop.
• Implement flow trimming when tasks are cached