With code, how do you update an airflow variable?

Question

I need to update a variable I have made in Airflow programmatically but I can not find the answer on how to do that with code.

I have retrieved my variable with this

Answer 1

Use Variable.set instead of Variable.set_val. set_val() is a setter for the val attribute and not intended for outside use. This should do what you want:

Variable.set("column_number", int(column_number) + 1)

It will make the actual update to the database, along with handling session and serialization for you if needed.

Reference: https://github.com/apache/incubator-airflow/blob/1.10.1/airflow/models.py#L4558-L4569