Airflow 3.0.0 : Import Variables from GUI fails with "Error Parsing JSON File"

[gbonazzoli]

Apache Airflow version

3.0.0

If "Other Airflow 2 version" selected, which one?

No response

What happened?

Airflow 3.0.0 : Import Variables from GUI fails with "Error Parsing JSON File",

but the same JSON file is correctly imported from the CLI:

(venv) root@airflow-tre:~/airflow# airflow variables import variables.json 
5 of 5 variables successfully updated.

What you think should happen instead?

The correct behaviour is to import variables.

How to reproduce

Export variables from an airflow 2.x instance and try to import them on Airflow 3.0.0

Operating System

Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

Versions of Apache Airflow Providers

apache-airflow-providers-celery==3.10.6
apache-airflow-providers-common-compat==1.6.0
apache-airflow-providers-common-io==1.5.4
apache-airflow-providers-common-sql==1.26.0
apache-airflow-providers-git==0.0.2
apache-airflow-providers-postgres==6.1.3
apache-airflow-providers-redis==4.0.2
apache-airflow-providers-smtp==2.0.3
apache-airflow-providers-ssh==4.0.1
apache-airflow-providers-standard==1.0.0

Deployment

Virtualenv installation

Deployment details

Nothing special, vanilla LXD Ubuntu 24.04 container and vanilla Airflow installation.

Anything else?

no

Are you willing to submit PR?

• Yes I am willing to submit a PR!

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[tirkarthi]

value of the variable is expected to be a string which is not the case with json.loads used in cli that doesn't perform this validation. Variable values other than string and conforming to the JSON spec like int, list, dict etc should be allowed like the cli implementation.

airflow/airflow-core/src/airflow/ui/src/pages/Variables/ImportVariablesForm.tsx

Lines 69 to 83 in 5c41c8e

	const text = event.target?.result as string;
	const parsedContent = JSON.parse(text) as unknown;
	if (
	typeof parsedContent === "object" &&
	parsedContent !== null &&
	Object.entries(parsedContent).every(
	([key, value]) => typeof key === "string" && typeof value === "string",
	)
	) {
	const typedContent = parsedContent as Record<string, string>;
	setFileContent(typedContent);
	} else {
	throw new Error("Invalid JSON format");

cc: @shubhamraj-git

[ldacey]

Ran into this as well. Ultimately I just added the key and pasted the value and did not use the import feature. The file format is the same as it always was during Airflow 2 though, it is a Variable I update manually once per month.