Add a note against use of top level code in timetable (#26649)

Accessing Variables, Connections at top level of code is bad practice

Add a section in best practices ref for timetable

Author: ephraimbuddy

airflow/serialization/serialized_objects.py

@@ -165,7 +165,11 @@ def __init__(self, type_string: str) -> None:
         self.type_string = type_string
 
     def __str__(self) -> str:
-        return f"Timetable class {self.type_string!r} is not registered"
+        return (
+            f"Timetable class {self.type_string!r} is not registered or "
+            "you have a top level database access that disrupted the session. "
+            "Please check the airflow best practices documentation."
+        )
 
 
 def _encode_timetable(var: Timetable) -> dict[str, Any]:

docs/apache-airflow/best-practices.rst

@@ -216,6 +216,41 @@ or if you need to deserialize a json object from the variable :
 For security purpose, you're recommended to use the :ref:`Secrets Backend<secrets_backend_configuration>`
 for any variable that contains sensitive data.
 
+.. _best_practices/timetables:
+
+Timetables
+----------
+Avoid using Airflow Variables/Connections or accessing airflow database at the top level of your timetable code.
+Database access should be delayed until the execution time of the DAG. This means that you should not have variables/connections retrieval
+as argument to your timetable class initialization or have Variable/connection at the top level of your custom timetable module.
+
+Bad example:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    from airflow.models.variable import Variable
+    from airflow.timetables.interval import CronDataIntervalTimetable
+
+
+    class CustomTimetable(CronDataIntervalTimetable):
+        def __init__(self, *args, something=Variable.get('something'), **kwargs):
+            self._something = something
+            super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
+
+Good example:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    from airflow.models.variable import Variable
+    from airflow.timetables.interval import CronDataIntervalTimetable
+
+
+    class CustomTimetable(CronDataIntervalTimetable):
+        def __init__(self, *args, something='something', **kwargs):
+            self._something = Variable.get(something)
+            super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
+
+
 Triggering DAGs after changes
 -----------------------------
 

docs/apache-airflow/concepts/timetable.rst

@@ -51,6 +51,12 @@ As such, Airflow allows for custom timetables to be written in plugins and used
 DAGs. An example demonstrating a custom timetable can be found in the
 :doc:`/howto/timetable` how-to guide.
 
+.. note::
+
+    As a general rule, always access Variables, Connections etc or anything that would access
+    the database as late as possible in your code. See :ref:`best_practices/timetables`
+    for more best practices to follow.
+
 Built-in Timetables
 -------------------
 

tests/serialization/test_dag_serialization.py

@@ -406,7 +406,9 @@ def test_dag_serialization_unregistered_custom_timetable(self):
         message = (
             "Failed to serialize DAG 'simple_dag': Timetable class "
             "'tests.test_utils.timetables.CustomSerializationTimetable' "
-            "is not registered"
+            "is not registered or "
+            "you have a top level database access that disrupted the session. "
+            "Please check the airflow best practices documentation."
         )
         assert str(ctx.value) == message
 
@@ -712,7 +714,9 @@ def test_deserialization_timetable_unregistered(self):
         message = (
             "Timetable class "
             "'tests.test_utils.timetables.CustomSerializationTimetable' "
-            "is not registered"
+            "is not registered or "
+            "you have a top level database access that disrupted the session. "
+            "Please check the airflow best practices documentation."
         )
         assert str(ctx.value) == message