Customize view of Apache from Airflow web UI¶
Airflow has feature that allows to integrate a custom UI along with its core UI using the Plugin manager.
Plugins integrate with the Airflow core RestAPI. In this plugin,
two object references are derived from the base class airflow.plugins_manager.AirflowPlugin.
They are fastapi_apps and fastapi_root_middlewares.
Using fastapi_apps in Airflow plugin, the core RestAPI can be extended to support extra endpoints to serve custom static file or any other json/application responses. In this object reference, the list of dictionaries with FastAPI application and metadata information like the name and the url prefix are passed on.
Using fastapi_root_middlewares in Airflow plugin, allows to register custom middleware at the root of the FastAPI application. This middleware can be used to add custom headers, logging, or any other functionality to the entire FastAPI application, including core endpoints. In this object reference, the list of dictionaries with Middleware factories object, initialization parameters and some metadata information like the name are passed on.
Information and code samples to register fastapi_apps and fastapi_root_middlewares are
available in plugin.
Support for Airflow 2 plugins¶
Airflow 2 plugins are still supported with some limitations. More information on such plugins can be found in the Airflow 2 documentation.
Adding Rest endpoints through the blueprints is still supported, those endpoints will
be integrated in the FastAPI application via the WSGI Middleware and accessible
under /pluginsv2.
It is not possible to extend the core UI, for instance by extending the base template, nonetheless extra menu items
of the auth managers are added to the core UI security tab and their href are rendered in iframes.
This is how the fab provider integrates users, roles, actions, resources and permissions custom views in the Airflow 3 UI.
Airflow 3 plugins will be improved to allow UI customization for the entire react app, it is recommended to upgrade your plugins to Airflow 3 plugins when possible. Until then for a temporary or custom needs it is possible to use a Middleware to inject custom javascript or css to the core UI index request.