GSP283

Overview

Imagine you have datasets that live in different locations around the globe, and your data is in Google Cloud Storage buckets or in BigQuery tables. How can you organize that data so that it gets consolidated and analyzed to provide insights on your business?

Cloud Composer can help you build workflows and move your data between regions and storage systems, with an intuitive graphical view. Among other benefits, it has templates for easy and reliable data transfer between BigQuery and Cloud Storage, both ways.

In this lab, you create and run an Apache Airflow workflow in Cloud Composer that completes the following tasks:

• Reads from a config file that provides a list of tables to copy
• Exports the list of tables from a BigQuery dataset located in US to Cloud Storage
• Copies the exported tables from the US to EU Cloud Storage bucket
• Imports the list of tables into the target BigQuery Dataset in EU

What you'll do

In this lab, you learn how to:

• Create a Cloud Composer environment
• Create Cloud Storage buckets
• Create BigQuery datasets
• Create and run Apache Airflow workflows in Cloud Composer to move data between Cloud Storage and BigQuery

Setup and requirements

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources are made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

Note: Use an Incognito (recommended) or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents conflicts between your personal account and the student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.

• Time to complete the lab—remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

Note: Use only the student account for this lab. If you use a different Google Cloud account, you may incur charges to that account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a dialog opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details pane with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details pane.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details pane.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To access Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Activate Cloud Shell

Cloud Shell is a virtual machine that is loaded with development tools. It offers a persistent 5GB home directory and runs on the Google Cloud. Cloud Shell provides command-line access to your Google Cloud resources.

1. Click Activate Cloud Shell at the top of the Google Cloud console.

2. Click through the following windows:

   • Continue through the Cloud Shell information window.
   • Authorize Cloud Shell to use your credentials to make Google Cloud API calls.

When you are connected, you are already authenticated, and the project is set to your Project_ID, . The output contains a line that declares the Project_ID for this session:

Your Cloud Platform project in this session is set to {{{project_0.project_id | "PROJECT_ID"}}}

gcloud is the command-line tool for Google Cloud. It comes pre-installed on Cloud Shell and supports tab-completion.

3. (Optional) You can list the active account name with this command:

gcloud auth list

4. Click Authorize.

Output:

ACTIVE: * ACCOUNT: {{{user_0.username | "ACCOUNT"}}} To set the active account, run: $ gcloud config set account `ACCOUNT`

5. (Optional) You can list the project ID with this command:

gcloud config list project

Output:

[core] project = {{{project_0.project_id | "PROJECT_ID"}}} Note: For full documentation of gcloud, in Google Cloud, refer to the gcloud CLI overview guide.

Task 1. Create a Cloud Composer environment

1. On the Google Cloud console title bar, type Composer in the Search field, then click Composer in the Products & Page section to create a Cloud Composer environment.

2. Then click Create environment.

3. In dropdown menu, select Composer 3.

4. Set the following parameters for your environment:

   • Name: composer-advanced-lab

   • Location:

   • Image Version: composer-3-airflow-n.n.n-build.n (select the highest number image available)

   • Service account: Compute Engine default service account

   • Under Environment resources, Select Small.

   • Click the dropdown for Show Advanced Configuration and select Airflow database zone as .

   Leave all other settings as default.

5. Click Create.

The environment creation process is completed when the green checkmark displays to the left of the environment name on the Environments page in the Cloud Console.

Note: It can take up to 20 minutes for the environment to complete the setup process. Move on to the next section Create Cloud Storage buckets and BigQuery destination dataset.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Create Cloud Composer environment.

Task 2. Create Cloud Storage buckets

In this task you will create two Cloud Storage Multi-Regional buckets. These buckets will be used to copy the exported tables across locations, i.e., US to EU.

Create a bucket in US

1. Navigate to Cloud Storage > Buckets and click Create.
2. Give the bucket a universally unique name including the project ID (e.g. -us).
3. For a Location Type select us (multiple regions in United States).
4. Leave the other value as default and click Create.
5. Check the box for Enforce public access prevention on this bucket and click Confirm for Public access will be prevented pop-up if prompted.

Create a bucket in EU

Repeat the steps to create another bucket in EU region. The universally unique name should include the location as a suffix to your bucket (e.g. -eu).

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Create two Cloud Storage buckets.

Task 3. Create the BigQuery destination dataset

1. Create the destination BigQuery Dataset in EU from the BigQuery new web UI.

2. Go to Navigation menu > BigQuery.

The Welcome to BigQuery in the Cloud Console message box opens. This message box provides a link to the quickstart guide and lists UI updates.

3. Click Done.

4. Then click the three dots next to your Qwiklabs project ID and select Create dataset.

5. Use the dataset ID nyc_tlc_EU, for location type choose Multi-region and select EU from the dropdown.

6. Click CREATE DATASET.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Create a dataset.

Task 4. Airflow and core concepts, a brief introduction

• While your environment is building, read about the sample file you'll be using in this lab.

Airflow is a platform to programmatically author, schedule and monitor workflows.

Use airflow to author workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of tasks. The airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies.

Core concepts

DAG - A Directed Acyclic Graph is a collection of tasks, organized to reflect their relationships and dependencies.

Operator - The description of a single task, it is usually atomic. For example, the BashOperator is used to execute bash command.

Task - A parameterised instance of an Operator; a node in the DAG.

Task Instance - A specific run of a task; characterized as: a DAG, a Task, and a point in time. It has an indicative state: running, success, failed, skipped, ...

Learn more about Airflow concepts from the Concepts documentation.

Task 5. Define the workflow

Cloud Composer workflows are comprised of DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs). The code shown in bq_copy_across_locations.py is the workflow code, also referred to as the DAG. Open the file now to see how it is built. Next will be a detailed look at some of the key components of the file.

To orchestrate all the workflow tasks, the DAG imports the following operators:

1. DummyOperator: Creates Start and End dummy tasks for better visual representation of the DAG.
2. BigQueryToCloudStorageOperator: Exports BigQuery tables to Cloud Storage buckets using Avro format.
3. GoogleCloudStorageToGoogleCloudStorageOperator: Copies files across Cloud Storage buckets.
4. GoogleCloudStorageToBigQueryOperator: Imports tables from Avro files in Cloud Storage bucket.

• In this example, the function read_table_list() is defined to read the config file and build the list of tables to copy:

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Functions # -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- def read_table_list(table_list_file): """ Reads the master CSV file that will help in creating Airflow tasks in the DAG dynamically. :param table_list_file: (String) The file location of the master file, e.g. '/home/airflow/framework/master.csv' :return master_record_all: (List) List of Python dictionaries containing the information for a single row in master CSV file. """ master_record_all = [] logger.info('Reading table_list_file from : %s' % str(table_list_file)) try: with open(table_list_file, 'rb') as csv_file: csv_reader = csv.reader(csv_file) next(csv_reader) # skip the headers for row in csv_reader: logger.info(row) master_record = { 'table_source': row[0], 'table_dest': row[1] } master_record_all.append(master_record) return master_record_all except IOError as e: logger.error('Error opening table_list_file %s: ' % str( table_list_file), e)

• The name of the DAG is bq_copy_us_to_eu_01, and the DAG is not scheduled by default so needs to be triggered manually.

default_args = { 'owner': 'airflow', 'start_date': datetime.today(), 'depends_on_past': False, 'email': [''], 'email_on_failure': False, 'email_on_retry': False, 'retries': 1, 'retry_delay': timedelta(minutes=5), } # DAG object. with models.DAG('bq_copy_us_to_eu_01', default_args=default_args, schedule_interval=None) as dag:

• To define the Cloud Storage plugin, the class Cloud StoragePlugin(AirflowPlugin) is defined, mapping the hook and operator downloaded from the Airflow 1.10-stable branch.

# Import operator from plugins from gcs_plugin.operators import gcs_to_gcs

Task 6. View environment information

1. Go back to Composer to check on the status of your environment.

2. Once your environment has been created, click the name of the environment to see its details.

The Environment details page provides information, such as the Airflow web UI URL, Google Kubernetes Engine cluster ID, name of the Cloud Storage bucket connected to the DAGs folder.

Note: Cloud Composer uses Cloud Storage to store Apache Airflow DAGs, also known as workflows. Each environment has an associated Cloud Storage bucket. Cloud Composer schedules only the DAGs in the Cloud Storage bucket.

The next steps should be completed in Cloud Shell.

Creating a virtual environment

Python virtual environments are used to isolate package installation from the system.

1. Install the virtualenv environment:

sudo apt-get install -y virtualenv

2. Build the virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv

3. Activate the virtual environment:

source venv/bin/activate

Task 7. Create a variable for the DAGs Cloud Storage bucket

• In Cloud Shell, run the following to copy the name of the DAGs bucket from your Environment Details page and set a variable to refer to it in Cloud Shell:

Note: Make sure to replace your DAGs bucket name in the following command. Navigate to Navigation menu > Cloud Storage, it will be similar to -composer-advanced-YOURDAGSBUCKET-bucket. DAGS_BUCKET=<your DAGs bucket name>

You will be using this variable a few times during the lab.

Task 8. Set Airflow variables

Airflow variables are an Airflow-specific concept that is distinct from environment variables. In this step, you'll set the following three Airflow variables used by the DAG we will deploy: table_list_file_path, gcs_source_bucket, and gcs_dest_bucket.

Key	Value	Details
table_list_file_path	/home/airflow/gcs/dags/bq_copy_eu_to_us_sample.csv	CSV file listing source and target tables, including dataset
gcs_source_bucket	{UNIQUE ID}-us	Cloud Storage bucket to use for exporting BigQuery tables from source
gcs_dest_bucket	{UNIQUE ID}-eu	Cloud Storage bucket to use for importing BigQuery tables at destination

The next gcloud composer command executes the Airflow CLI sub-command variables. The sub-command passes the arguments to the gcloud command line tool.

To set the three variables, you will run the composer command once for each row from the above table. The form of the command is this:

gcloud composer environments run ENVIRONMENT_NAME \ --location LOCATION variables -- \ set KEY VALUE You can safely ignore this gcloud error: (ERROR: gcloud crashed (TypeError): 'NoneType' object is not callable). This is a known issue with using gcloud composer environments run with the 410.0.0 version of gcloud. Your variables will still be set accordingly despite the error message.

• ENVIRONMENT_NAME is the name of the environment.
• LOCATION is the Compute Engine region where the environment is located. The gcloud composer command requires including the --location flag or setting the default location before running the gcloud command.
• KEY and VALUE specify the variable and its value to set. Include a space two dashes space ( -- ) between the left-side gcloud command with gcloud-related arguments and the right-side Airflow sub-command-related arguments. Also include a space between the KEY and VALUE arguments. using the gcloud composer environments run command with the variables sub-command in

Run these commands in Cloud Shell, replacing gcs_source_bucket and gcs_dest_bucket by the names of the buckets you created on Task 2.

gcloud composer environments run composer-advanced-lab \ --location {{{ project_0.default_region | "REGION" }}} variables -- \ set table_list_file_path /home/airflow/gcs/dags/bq_copy_eu_to_us_sample.csv gcloud composer environments run composer-advanced-lab \ --location {{{ project_0.default_region | "REGION" }}} variables -- \ set gcs_source_bucket {UNIQUE ID}-us gcloud composer environments run composer-advanced-lab \ --location {{{ project_0.default_region | "REGION" }}} variables -- \ set gcs_dest_bucket {UNIQUE_ID}-eu

To see the value of a variable, run the Airflow CLI sub-command variables with the get argument or use the Airflow UI.

For example, run the following:

gcloud composer environments run composer-advanced-lab \ --location {{{ project_0.default_region | "REGION" }}} variables -- \ get gcs_source_bucket Note: Make sure to set all three Airflow variables used by the DAG.

Task 9. Upload the DAG and dependencies to Cloud Storage

1. Copy the Google Cloud Python docs samples files into your Cloud shell:

cd ~ gcloud storage cp -r gs://spls/gsp283/python-docs-samples .

2. Upload a copy of the third party hook and operator to the plugins folder of your Composer DAGs Cloud Storage bucket:

gcloud storage cp -r python-docs-samples/third_party/apache-airflow/plugins/* gs://$DAGS_BUCKET/plugins

3. Next, upload the DAG and config file to the DAGs Cloud Storage bucket of your environment:

gcloud storage cp python-docs-samples/composer/workflows/bq_copy_across_locations.py gs://$DAGS_BUCKET/dags gcloud storage cp python-docs-samples/composer/workflows/bq_copy_eu_to_us_sample.csv gs://$DAGS_BUCKET/dags

Cloud Composer registers the DAG in your Airflow environment automatically, and DAG changes occur within 3-5 minutes. You can see task status in the Airflow web interface and confirm the DAG is not scheduled as per the settings.

Task 10. Explore the Airflow UI

To access the Airflow web interface using the Cloud Console:

1. Go back to the Composer Environments page.
2. In the Airflow webserver column for the environment, click the Airflow link.

3. Click on your lab credentials.
4. The Airflow web UI opens in a new browser window. Data will still be loading when you get here. You can continue with the lab while this is happening.

Viewing variables

The variables you set earlier are persisted in your environment.

• View the variables by selecting Admin >Variables from the Airflow menu bar.

Trigger the DAG to run manually

1. Click on the DAGs tab and wait for the links to finish loading.

2. To trigger the DAG manually, click the play button for composer_sample_bq_copy_across_locations :

3. Click Trigger DAG to confirm this action.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Uploading the DAG and dependencies to Cloud Storage

Exploring DAG runs

When you upload your DAG file to the DAGs folder in Cloud Storage, Cloud Composer parses the file. If no errors are found, the name of the workflow appears in the DAG listing, and the workflow is queued to run immediately if the schedule conditions are met, in this case, None as per the settings.

The Runs status turns green once the play button is pressed:

1. Click the name of the DAG to open the DAG details page. This page includes a graphical representation of workflow tasks and dependencies.

2. Now, in the toolbar, click Graph, then mouseover the graphic for each task to see its status. Note that the border around each task also indicates the status (green border = running; red = failed, etc.).

To run the workflow again from the Graph view:

1. In the Airflow UI Graph View, click the start graphic.
2. Click Clear to reset all the tasks and then click OK to confirm.

Refresh your browser while the process is running to see the most recent information.

Task 11. Validate the results

Now check the status and results of the workflow by going to these Cloud Console pages:

• The exported tables were copied from the US bucket to the EU Cloud Storage bucket. Click on Cloud Storage to see the intermediate Avro files in the source (US) and destination (EU) buckets.
• The list of tables were imported into the target BigQuery Dataset. Click on BigQuery, then click on your project name and the nyc_tlc_EU dataset to validate the tables are accessible from the dataset you created.

Delete the Cloud Composer environment

1. Return to the Environments page in Cloud Composer.

2. Select your Cloud Composer environment.

3. Click Delete.

4. In the dialog that opens, click Delete to confirm you want to continue deleting the Cloud Composer environment.

Congratulations!

You copied tables programmatically from US to EU! This lab is based on this blog post by David Sabater Dinter.

Next steps

• Learn more about using Airflow at the Airflow website or the Airflow GitHub project.
• There are lots of other resources available for Airflow, including a discussion group.
• Sign up for an Apache JIRA account and re-open any issues that you care about in the Apache Airflow JIRA project.
• For information about the Airflow UI, see Accessing the web interface.

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Manual Last Updated January 06, 2025

Lab Last Tested January 06, 2025

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