Resources

Connect to databases, APIs, and other external systems.

Resources in Airplane allow you to easily configure connections to external systems like databases and APIs and use them in your tasks and runbooks.

Using resources in tasks

Resources can be attached to tasks and referenced from within the task.

SQL

When creating a SQL task you can choose a database resource to query against. The database is chosen from the UI or set in the task definition.

REST

When you create a REST task, you can select a REST API. The REST API's base URL will be used, as well as any headers specified on the resource.

The REST API is chosen from the UI or set in the task definition.

JavaScript, Python, and other tasks

Resource attachment

Resources must be attached to tasks before they can be accessed via environment variables or built-ins.

typescript
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export default airplane.task(
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  {
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    slug: "my_task",
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    resources: {
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      // Where backend_db is the slug of a resource.
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      db: "backend_db"
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    },
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  },
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  async () => {...}
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);

When attached to a task, resources are passed as a JSON-encoded string via the environment variable AIRPLANE_RESOURCES. This contains a mapping of resource alias to a resource object. For more information, see the Resource environment variables reference.

Built-ins

The JavaScript and Python SDKs offer built-in functions for common operations against resources. Once a resource is attached to a task, you can refer to the resource by alias in the built-in.

For example, after attaching the SQL resource with slug db, you can refer to it using a built-in to query the SQL database:

typescript
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const run = await airplane.sql.query<{ id: string; name: string; email: string }>(
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  "db", // Attached resource
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  "select * from users where name ilike :name", // SQL query to execute
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  { args: { name: `%${name}%` } }, // Query arguments
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);

Next steps

Resource overview documentation