I am looking for a way to explicitly call/execute an

asset

(or

op

) for a list of items. While

assets

are executed in parallel if they are independent, I did not find a way to include iteration. Simple example: Iterate over a list of files and perform a task for each file. The tasks are independent.

python
@asset
def iterate_files():
	path = Path("/some/path")
	
	for file in path.iterdir():
		# here I would like to start parallel ops
		...

If I pass a list to a downstream

asset

, the operation is performed sequentially:

python

@asset
def list_of_files():
	path = Path("/some/path")
	return list(path.iterdir())

@asset
def process_files(list_of_files):
	for file in list_of_files):
		with open(file, 'rt') as f:
			for line in f:
				# write to a DB or other operation

Is it possible to achieve a parallel execution of the downstream task with Dagster? (cross posted from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75681976/call-downstream-assets-or-ops-in-parallel-with-dagster)

use a graph-backed asset with dynamic ops:

@op(out=DynamicOut())
def iterate_files():
    for file in whatever:
        yield DynamicOutput(file, some_mapping_key)

@op
def process_file(file)
    yada yada

@graph_asset
def processed_files():
    iterate_files.map(processed_files)

interesting! thanks for the pointer.

now you’re thinking in dagster blob devil

Follow up question: is it possible to trigger this op from an asset? Or do I include the upstream dependency in the

graph_asset

and that's all I need?

not possible to trigger an op from an asset - if you have an op that you want to run as part of your assets, it should likely be wrapped in a graph-backed asset (or, you should potentially see if you can reframe that op as a software-defined asset)

@chris I tried the solution with the graph-backed asset (which seems to be the most logical one) but I run into an error that I don't understand:

dagster._check.CheckError: Invariant failed. Description: The set of output names keys specified in the keys_by_output_name argument must equal the set of asset keys outputted by load_files_to_postgres_parallel_as_asset.

Do I have to define the ops as dependencies in the

graph_asset

?