Bring your towel and join one of the fastest growing data communities. Welcome to our second-generation open source orchestration platform, a completely rethought approach to dataflow automation.

Prefect Community

Hi everyone! I’ve created a <https://docs.prefect.io/core/idioms/flow-to-flow.html#scheduling-a-flow-of-flows|flow-of-flows> which runs another flow in a loop, something like this:
```with Flow('Parent Flow') as flow:
    
    dates = ['2021-01-04', '2021-01-05', '2021-01-06'] // a list of dates

    for i in range(len(dates)):
       //run child flow with i as parameter```
When I check the Prefect UI it seems like the child flows are running in parallel (I’m using threads) which is in general great but in this case I’d like the child flows to be run sequentially. Is there a way to force the parent flow to run them that way?? :thinking_face:

You can so with a LocalExecutor or you can do something like this:
```with Flow('Parent Flow') as flow:
    
    dates = ['2021-01-04', '2021-01-05', '2021-01-06'] // a list of dates
    child_flows = []
    for i in range(len(dates)):
       x = create_flow_run(...)
       child_flows.append(x)
    for i in range(1,len(dates)):
       child_flows[i].set_upsteam(child_flows[i-1])```

<@U01QEJ9PP53>  `set_upsteam()` is what I needed! Thanks so much!

<@U01QEJ9PP53> Your example snippet above worked out perfectly fine, thank you for that! I’m kinda stuck with the next thing though: I don’t want to use a hard coded list of dates as shown in the snippet, but a task that creates the list using the given flow parameter, something like this:
```with Flow('Parent Flow') as flow:
    year = Parameter('year')
    dates = create_dates_list(year) // still a list of dates, but this is now a task.

    child_flows = []
    for i in range(len(dates)):
       x = create_flow_run(...)
       child_flows.append(x)
    for i in range(1,len(dates)):
       child_flows[i].set_upsteam(child_flows[i-1])```
When I try that it throws the error `len(dates): FunctionTask doesn't have the attribute len` . Is there a way to get the value of the task instead of the reference to the task instance? Something else I’ve tried: making the task `create_dates_list` a regular python function, so just removing the task decorator. But then it throws an error because the function’s argument value looks like `&lt;Parameter year&gt;` , so it’s the parameter instance and not the value of the Parameter. Is there a way to get the value of a Parameter inside a function that is not a task?
I hope this makes sense! :pray:

You can’t loop over a dynamic range of tasks because the loop is constructing the DAG, but the DAG can’t be constructed if the number of items is not defined ahead of time. If you have a dynamic set of dates, then you can’t use `for` and you have to use `mapping` instead by default.

If you use mapping, then you lose the sequential execution of creating the flow run by time. You need to use <https://docs.prefect.io/core/advanced_tutorials/task-looping.html|task looping > instead to run them in a loop.

The thing is if `creates_dates_list` is a fucntion, it executes during flow registration time, but then the Parameter value doesn’t exist until flow run time which is why you get that weird looking `Paramter year` . Tasks are the mechanism to defer execution to flow run time.

<@U01QEJ9PP53> ohh interesting!! I’ll read up on that! Thanks so much!