airbyte/docs/tutorials/exploring-workspace-folder.md

# Diving into Airbyte Workspace folders

## Overview

This tutorial will describe how to explore Airbyte Workspace folders. 

This is useful if you need to browse the docker volumes where extra output files of 
Airbyte server and workers are stored since they may not be accessible through the UI.

## Exploring the Logs folders

When running a Sync in Airbyte, you have the option to look at the logs in the UI as shown next.

### Identifying Workspace IDs

In the screenshot below, you can notice the highlighted blue boxes are showing the id numbers 
that were used for the selected "Attempt" for this sync job.

In this case, the job was running in `/tmp/workspace/9/2/` folder since the tab of the third attempt 
is being selected in the UI (first attempt would be `/tmp/workspace/9/0/`).

![](../.gitbook/assets/explore_logs.png)

The highlighted button in the red circle on the right would allow you to download the logs.log file.  
However, there are actually more files being recorded in the same workspace folder...
Thus, we might want to dive deeper to explore these folders and gain a better understanding of what 
is being run by Airbyte.

### Understanding the Docker run commands 

Scrolling down a bit more, we can also read the different docker commands being used internally are starting with:

```text
docker run --rm -i -v airbyte_workspace:/data -v /tmp/airbyte_local:/local -w /data/9/2 --network host ...
```

From there, we can observe that Airbyte is calling the `-v` option to use a docker named volume 
called `airbyte_workspace` that is mounted in the container at the location `/data`.

Following [Docker Volume documentation](https://docs.docker.com/storage/volumes/), we can inspect and 
manipulate persisted configuration data in these volumes. 

### Opening a Unix shell prompt to browse the Docker volume

For example, we can run any docker container/image to browse the content of this named volume by 
mounting it similarly, let's use the [busybox](https://hub.docker.com/_/busybox) image.

```text
docker run -it --rm --volume airbyte_workspace:/data busybox
```

This will drop you into an `sh` shell inside the docker container to allow you to do what you want 
inside a BusyBox system from which we can browse the filesystem and accessing to log files:

```text
ls /data/9/2/
```

Example Output:

```text
catalog.json                  normalize                     tap_config.json
logs.log                      singer_rendered_catalog.json  target_config.json
```

### Browsing from the host shell

Or, if you don't want to transfer to a shell prompt inside the docker image, you can simply run Shell commands using docker commands as a proxy like this:

```bash
docker run -it --rm --volume airbyte_workspace:/data busybox ls /data/9/2
```

Example Output:

```text
catalog.json                 singer_rendered_catalog.json
logs.log                     tap_config.json
normalize                    target_config.json
```

### Reading the content of the catalog.json file

For example, it is often useful to inspect the content of the [catalog](beginners-guide-to-catalog.md) file.
You could do so by running a `cat` command:

```bash
docker run -it --rm --volume airbyte_workspace:/data busybox cat /data/9/2/catalog.json
```

Example Output:

```text
{"streams":[{"stream":{"name":"exchange_rate","json_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{"CHF":{"type":"number"},"HRK":{"type":"number"},"date":{"type":"string"},"MXN":{"type":"number"},"ZAR":{"type":"number"},"INR":{"type":"number"},"CNY":{"type":"number"},"THB":{"type":"number"},"AUD":{"type":"number"},"ILS":{"type":"number"},"KRW":{"type":"number"},"JPY":{"type":"number"},"PLN":{"type":"number"},"GBP":{"type":"number"},"IDR":{"type":"number"},"HUF":{"type":"number"},"PHP":{"type":"number"},"TRY":{"type":"number"},"RUB":{"type":"number"},"HKD":{"type":"number"},"ISK":{"type":"number"},"EUR":{"type":"number"},"DKK":{"type":"number"},"CAD":{"type":"number"},"MYR":{"type":"number"},"USD":{"type":"number"},"BGN":{"type":"number"},"NOK":{"type":"number"},"RON":{"type":"number"},"SGD":{"type":"number"},"CZK":{"type":"number"},"SEK":{"type":"number"},"NZD":{"type":"number"},"BRL":{"type":"number"}}},"supported_sync_modes":["full_refresh"],"default_cursor_field":[]},"sync_mode":"full_refresh","cursor_field":[]}]}
```

### Extract catalog.json file from docker volume

Or if you want to copy it out from the docker image onto your host machine:

```bash
docker cp airbyte-server:/tmp/workspace/9/2/catalog.json .
cat catalog.json
```

## CSV or JSON local Destinations: Check local data folder

If you setup a pipeline using one of the local File based destinations (CSV or JSON), Airbyte is writing
the resulting files containing the data in the special `/local/` directory in the container.
By default, this volume is mounted from `/tmp/airbyte_local` on the host machine. So you need to navigate
to this [local folder](file:///tmp/airbyte_local/) on the filesystem of the machine running the Airbyte instance
to retrieve the local data files.

Or, you can also run through docker commands as proxy:

```bash
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo "In the container:"

docker run -it --rm -v /tmp/airbyte_local:/local busybox find /local

echo ""
echo "On the host:"

find /tmp/airbyte_local
```

Example Output:

```text
In the container:
/local
/local/data
/local/data/exchange_rate_raw.csv

On the host:
/tmp/airbyte_local
/tmp/airbyte_local/data
/tmp/airbyte_local/data/exchange_rate_raw.csv
```

## Notes about running on macOS vs Linux

Note that Docker for Mac is not a real Docker host, now it actually runs a virtual machine behind the scenes and hides it from you to make things "simpler". 

Here are some related links as references on accessing Docker Volumes:

* on macOS [Using Docker containers in 2019](https://stackoverflow.com/a/55648186)
* official doc [Use Volume](https://docs.docker.com/storage/volumes/#backup-restore-or-migrate-data-volumes)

From these discussions, we've been using on macOS either:

1. any docker container/image to browse the virtual filesystem by mounting the volume in order to access them, for example with [busybox](https://hub.docker.com/_/busybox)
2. or extract files from the volume by copying them onto the host with [Docker cp](https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/cp/)

However, as a side remark on Linux, accessing to named Docker Volume can be easier since you simply need to:

```text
docker volume inspect <volume_name>
```

Then look at the `Mountpoint` value, this is where the volume is actually stored in the host filesystem and you can directly retrieve files directly from that folder.