@Marvin Im trying to install sqlalchemy with "prefect block register -m sqlalchemy" but its not showing in the blocks catalog

It looks like you need to follow a particular set of steps to ensure the SQLAlchemy block is appropriately registered and shows up in the Prefect blocks catalog. Unfortunately, it seems that looking through the documentation hasn't yielded a straightforward reason why the block is not showing up after using the

prefect block register -m sqlalchemy

command. One potential step that might be missing is ensuring the block has been saved either through code or through the Prefect UI before running the register command. As described here, you first need to create and save the block, like shown in the following snippet:

python
from prefect_sqlalchemy import SqlAlchemyConnector, ConnectionComponents, SyncDriver

# Create the connector with the appropriate driver and database arguments
connector = SqlAlchemyConnector(
    connection_info=ConnectionComponents(
        driver=SyncDriver.SQLITE_PYSQLITE,
        database="DATABASE-PLACEHOLDER.db"
    )
)

# Save the block with a placeholder name
connector.save("BLOCK_NAME-PLACEHOLDER")

Once you have saved the block with the specified settings, you can proceed to register the block:

shell
prefect block register -m prefect_sqlalchemy

It's also worth noting that the registration command you mentioned is missing the prefix

prefect_

which is required, as indicated by the documentation. It should be

prefect block register -m prefect_sqlalchemy

. If problems persist even after these steps, it might be worth checking if there are any underlying issues that users have reported on GitHub. If you would like to go that route, I can assist you in searching GitHub issues related to block registration problems in Prefect.

@Marvin how can I reuse artifacts?

Artifacts in Prefect are persisted outputs that can include tables, Markdown, or links. They are stored on Prefect Cloud or a Prefect server instance and can be rendered in the Prefect UI. If you want to reuse artifacts across multiple flows or runs, here's a summary of what you can do: 1. Keyed Artifacts: To track multiple versions of the same artifact over time and make them accessible for reuse, you can provide a

key

argument when creating the artifact. This

key

allows you to relate different artifacts across task runs and flow runs. Here's an example from the Prefect documentation:

python
from prefect import flow, task
from prefect.artifacts import create_link_artifact

@task
def my_first_task():
    create_link_artifact(
        key="irregular-data",
        link="<https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/my-bucket-name/highly_variable_data.csv>",
        description="## Highly variable data",
    )

@task
def my_second_task():
    create_link_artifact(
        key="irregular-data",
        link="<https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/my-bucket-name/low_pred_data.csv>",
        description="# Low prediction accuracy",
    )

@flow
def my_flow():
    my_first_task()
    my_second_task()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    my_flow()

2. Persistent Storage: When creating artifacts, make sure that the links or objects you reference are stored in a persistent location that can be accessed by subsequent task runs or flows (e.g., cloud storage like AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, etc.). 3. Use in Tasks: You can access artifacts within tasks and flows by referencing their keys or file paths. Artifacts can be linked to for easy access in the Prefect UI. Remember that artifacts can be linked to specific flow runs or task runs, so you should carefully manage how they are created and accessed to ensure that they are reusable as you intend. If you would like to dive deeper into the documentation for more examples or use cases, you can visit the artifcats section of the Prefect documentation.