@Marvin is there a way to use a method defined in a class as the flow function?

✅ thought for 160.6 seconds

short answer, yes

Yes, you can definitely use a class method as a flow function in Prefect! Here's how you can do it:

python
from prefect import flow

class MyClass:
    @flow
    @classmethod
    def my_flow(cls, x):
        return x * 2

    @flow
    def instance_flow(self, x):
        return x * 3

You can use the

@flow

decorator with: 1. Class methods (using

@classmethod

) 2. Instance methods 3. Static methods (using

@staticmethod

) A few important points to note: 1. When using with

@classmethod

, put the

@flow

decorator BEFORE the

@classmethod

decorator as shown in the example above. 2. Both class methods and instance methods work fine as flows, but they have slightly different use cases: - Class methods (

@classmethod

) can be called without creating an instance of the class - Instance methods require you to create an instance first Here's how you would use these flows:

python
# Using the class method flow (no instance needed)
MyClass.my_flow(5)  # Returns 10

# Using the instance method flow
my_instance = MyClass()
my_instance.instance_flow(5)  # Returns 15

This pattern can be particularly useful when you want to organize related flows within a class or when your flows need to share some class-level functionality or configuration. Just remember that when using instance methods as flows, the instance itself needs to be serializable if you're planning to deploy the flow, as Prefect will need to serialize the entire object. If you're running into serialization issues, using class methods might be a better approach as they don't require instance state.

Thanks! That makes sense.