HttpOperator or HttpHook for HTTPS in Airflow

Question

I'm working on a little proof of concept about Airflow on Google Cloud.

Essentially, I want to create a workflow that download data from an REST API (https), transform this data into JSON format and upload it on a Google Cloud storage unit.

I've already done this with pure Python code and it works. Pretty straightforward! But because I want to schedule this and there is some dependencies, Airflow should be the ideal tool for this.

After careful reading of the Airflow documentation, I've seen the HttpOperator and/or HttpHook can do the trick for the download part.

I've created my Http connection into the WebUI with my email/password for the authorization as the following:

{Conn Id: "atlassian_marketplace", Conn Type: "HTTP", Host: "https://marketplace.atlassian.com/rest/2", Schema: None/Blank, Login: "my username", Password: "my password", Port: None/Blank, Extra: None/Blank}

First question: -When to use the SimpleHttpOperator versus the HttpHook?

Second question: -How do we use SimpleHttpOperator or HttpHook with HTTPs calls?

Third question: -How do we access the data returned by the API call?

In my case, the XCOM feature will not do the trick because these API calls can return a lot of data (100-300mb)!

I've look on Google to find an example code on how to use the operaor/hook for my use case but i didn't find anything useful, yet.

Any ideas?

I put here the skeleton of my code so far.

# Usual Airflow import

# Dag creation
dag = DAG(
    'get_reporting_links',
    default_args=default_args,
    description='Get reporting links',
    schedule_interval=timedelta(days=1))

# Task 1: Dummy start
start = DummyOperator(task_id="Start", retries=2, dag=dag)

# Task 2: Connect to Atlassian Marketplace
get_data = SimpleHttpOperator(
            http_conn_id="atlassian_marketplace",
          endpoint="/vendors/{vendorId}/reporting".format({vendorId: "some number"}), 
            method="GET")

# Task 3: Save JSON data locally
# TODO: transform_json: transform to JSON get_data.json()?

# Task 4: Upload data to GCP
# TODO: upload_gcs: use Airflow GCS connection

# Task 5: Stop
stop = DummyOperator(task_id="Stop", retries=2, dag=dag)

# Dependencies
start >> get_data >> transform_json >> upload_gcs >> stop

Answer 1

Look at the following example:

# Usual Airflow import

# Dag creation
dag = DAG(
    'get_reporting_links',
    default_args=default_args,
    description='Get reporting links',
    schedule_interval=timedelta(days=1))

# Task 1: Dummy start
start = DummyOperator(task_id="Start", retries=2, dag=dag)

# Task 2: Connect to Atlassian Marketplace
get_data = SimpleHttpOperator(
     task_id="get_data",
     http_conn_id="atlassian_marketplace",
     endpoint="/vendors/{vendorId}/reporting".format({vendorId: "some number"}), 
     method="GET",
     xcom_push=True,
)

def transform_json(**kwargs):
    ti = kwargs['ti']
    pulled_value_1 = ti.xcom_pull(key=None, task_ids='get_data')
    ...
    # transform the json here and save the content to a file


# Task 3: Save JSON data locally
save_and_transform = PythonOperator(
    task_id="save_and_transform", 
    python_callable=transform_json,
    provide_context=True,
)

# Task 4: Upload data to GCP
upload_to_gcs = FileToGoogleCloudStorageOperator(...)

# Task 5: Stop
stop = DummyOperator(task_id="Stop", retries=2, dag=dag)

# Dependencies
start >> get_data >> save_and_transform >> upload_to_gcs >> stop