Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 5. Polaris REST API

In this chapter, we will delve into the REST API provided by Apache Polaris for managing catalogs, roles, namespaces, tables, and views. The Polaris REST API enables seamless and programmatic interaction with the catalog layer of your data lakehouse, making it easier to orchestrate complex operations across distributed environments.

Whether adding a new catalog, defining access control through roles and principals, or performing granular namespace and table operations, the Polaris REST API provides the flexibility to handle these tasks efficiently. By leveraging this API, teams can automate catalog management tasks, ensuring scalability, consistency, and improved governance within their data platform.

We will break down each endpoint, exploring its purpose and showcasing its usage with cURL and Python’s requests library. By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding of how to programmatically manage your Polaris deployment and integrate it into your workflows.

The following sections examine the Polaris Management REST API endpoints specifically, grouped by functionality (this differs from the Apache Icicle REST catalog spec and endpoints). There is also a Python CLI built into the Polaris Repo that can be used to execute most of the tasks without having to write custom scripts or use an HTTP client like cURL, Postman, or Insomnia.

You can always find the latest version of this REST Spec here:

• https://github.com/apache/polaris/blob/main/spec/polaris-management-service.yml ...