Metadata File

Overview

Metadata File is a storage and lakehouse platform. Learn more in the official Metadata File documentation.

The DataHub integration for Metadata File covers file/lakehouse metadata entities such as datasets, paths, and containers. Depending on module capabilities, it can also capture features such as lineage, usage, profiling, ownership, tags, and stateful deletion detection.

Concept Mapping

While the specific concept mapping is still pending, this shows the generic concept mapping in DataHub.

Source Concept	DataHub Concept	Notes
Platform/account/project scope	Platform Instance, Container	Organizes assets within the platform context.
Core technical asset (for example table/view/topic/file)	Dataset	Primary ingested technical asset.
Schema fields / columns	SchemaField	Included when schema extraction is supported.
Ownership and collaboration principals	CorpUser, CorpGroup	Emitted by modules that support ownership and identity metadata.
Dependencies and processing relationships	Lineage edges	Available when lineage extraction is supported and enabled.

Module file

Important Capabilities

Capability	Status	Notes
Detect Deleted Entities	✅	Enabled by default via stateful ingestion.
Test Connection	✅	Enabled by default.

Overview

The file module ingests metadata from Metadata File into DataHub. It is intended for production ingestion workflows and module-specific capabilities are documented below.

Prerequisites

Before running ingestion, ensure network connectivity to the source, valid authentication credentials, and read permissions for metadata APIs required by this module.

Install the Plugin

pip install 'acryl-datahub[file]'

Starter Recipe

Check out the following recipe to get started with ingestion! See below for full configuration options.

For general pointers on writing and running a recipe, see our main recipe guide.

source:
  type: file
  config:
    # Coordinates
    path: ./path/to/mce/file.json

sink:
  # sink configs

Config Details

Options

Note that a . is used to denote nested fields in the YAML recipe.

Field	Description
path ✅ string	File path to folder or file to ingest, or URL to a remote file. If pointed to a folder, all files with extension {file_extension} (default json) within that folder will be processed.
aspect One of string, null	Set to an aspect to only read this aspect for ingestion. Default: None
count_all_before_starting boolean	When enabled, counts total number of records in the file before starting. Used for accurate estimation of completion time. Turn it off if startup time is too high. Default: True
file_extension string	When providing a folder to use to read files, set this field to control file extensions that you want the source to process. * is a special value that means process every file regardless of extension Default: .json
read_mode Enum	One of: "STREAM", "BATCH", "AUTO"
stateful_ingestion One of StatefulStaleMetadataRemovalConfig, null	Default: None
stateful_ingestion.enabled boolean	Whether or not to enable stateful ingest. Default: True if a pipeline_name is set and either a datahub-rest sink or datahub_api is specified, otherwise False Default: False
stateful_ingestion.fail_safe_threshold number	Prevents large amount of soft deletes & the state from committing from accidental changes to the source configuration if the relative change percent in entities compared to the previous state is above the 'fail_safe_threshold'. Default: 75.0
stateful_ingestion.remove_stale_metadata boolean	Soft-deletes the entities present in the last successful run but missing in the current run with stateful_ingestion enabled. Default: True

Schema

The JSONSchema for this configuration is inlined below.

{
  "$defs": {
    "FileReadMode": {
      "enum": [
        "STREAM",
        "BATCH",
        "AUTO"
      ],
      "title": "FileReadMode",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "StatefulStaleMetadataRemovalConfig": {
      "additionalProperties": false,
      "description": "Base specialized config for Stateful Ingestion with stale metadata removal capability.",
      "properties": {
        "enabled": {
          "default": false,
          "description": "Whether or not to enable stateful ingest. Default: True if a pipeline_name is set and either a datahub-rest sink or `datahub_api` is specified, otherwise False",
          "title": "Enabled",
          "type": "boolean"
        },
        "remove_stale_metadata": {
          "default": true,
          "description": "Soft-deletes the entities present in the last successful run but missing in the current run with stateful_ingestion enabled.",
          "title": "Remove Stale Metadata",
          "type": "boolean"
        },
        "fail_safe_threshold": {
          "default": 75.0,
          "description": "Prevents large amount of soft deletes & the state from committing from accidental changes to the source configuration if the relative change percent in entities compared to the previous state is above the 'fail_safe_threshold'.",
          "maximum": 100.0,
          "minimum": 0.0,
          "title": "Fail Safe Threshold",
          "type": "number"
        }
      },
      "title": "StatefulStaleMetadataRemovalConfig",
      "type": "object"
    }
  },
  "properties": {
    "stateful_ingestion": {
      "anyOf": [
        {
          "$ref": "#/$defs/StatefulStaleMetadataRemovalConfig"
        },
        {
          "type": "null"
        }
      ],
      "default": null
    },
    "path": {
      "description": "File path to folder or file to ingest, or URL to a remote file. If pointed to a folder, all files with extension {file_extension} (default json) within that folder will be processed.",
      "title": "Path",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "file_extension": {
      "default": ".json",
      "description": "When providing a folder to use to read files, set this field to control file extensions that you want the source to process. * is a special value that means process every file regardless of extension",
      "title": "File Extension",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "read_mode": {
      "$ref": "#/$defs/FileReadMode",
      "default": "AUTO"
    },
    "aspect": {
      "anyOf": [
        {
          "type": "string"
        },
        {
          "type": "null"
        }
      ],
      "default": null,
      "description": "Set to an aspect to only read this aspect for ingestion.",
      "title": "Aspect"
    },
    "count_all_before_starting": {
      "default": true,
      "description": "When enabled, counts total number of records in the file before starting. Used for accurate estimation of completion time. Turn it off if startup time is too high.",
      "title": "Count All Before Starting",
      "type": "boolean"
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "path"
  ],
  "title": "FileSourceConfig",
  "type": "object"
}

Capabilities

Use the Important Capabilities table above as the source of truth for supported features and whether additional configuration is required.

Limitations

Module behavior is constrained by source APIs, permissions, and metadata exposed by the platform. Refer to capability notes for unsupported or conditional features.

Troubleshooting

If ingestion fails, validate credentials, permissions, connectivity, and scope filters first. Then review ingestion logs for source-specific errors and adjust configuration accordingly.

Code Coordinates

• Class Name: datahub.ingestion.source.file.GenericFileSource
• Browse on GitHub

Questions?

If you've got any questions on configuring ingestion for Metadata File, feel free to ping us on our Slack.

💡 Contributing to this documentation

This page is auto-generated from the underlying source code. To make changes, please edit the relevant source files in the metadata-ingestion directory.

Tip: For quick typo fixes or documentation updates, you can click the ✏️ Edit icon directly in the GitHub UI to open a Pull Request. For larger changes and PR naming conventions, please refer to our Contributing Guide.