I’m new to Prefect, and want to know if Prefect exposes any REST API. I have the frontend UI already and want to figure out a way to talk with Prefect
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Chris White
06/26/2020, 3:17 AM
Hi @Alfie and welcome to the community!
Yes, Prefect has a GraphQL API (GraphQL is much more expressive than a REST API and can still be accessed via POST requests).
There are currently two options for using the Prefect API:
1.) currently, the open source version of Prefect allows you to host this API locally yourself. In short, if you plan to only run workflows on a local machine this is a viable option. Configuring this to work across machines is non trivial but is possible (e.g., see this blog post: https://medium.com/the-prefect-blog/prefect-server-101-deploying-to-google-cloud-platform-47354b16afe2)
2.) If you want to run workflows in a distributed environment (e.g., kubernetes, multiple cloud environments, multiple machines) but are not interested in the networking complexities of hosting an API yourself, you might consider Prefect Cloud which is a highly available publicly accessible API that Prefect hosts on users’ behalf. You can sign up and get started for free at https://cloud.prefect.io/
Hope that helps!