Managing connections

Airflow's Connection object stores credentials for external services, definable via environment variables, an external secrets backend such as HashiCorp Vault or AWS SSM Parameter Store, or the metadata database. Environment variables follow the AIRFLOW_CONN_{CONN_ID} convention — all uppercase with single underscores — and accept JSON or Airflow URI format values. Use the Connection class's as_json() property to generate JSON representations and to convert URI-format connections to JSON; get_uri() generates URIs, storing JSON structures that cannot be urlencoded losslessly under the extra query param. Prefer get_uri() over manual URI building, since special characters like / in passwords break parsing unless encoded with quote_plus(). For database-stored connections, Airflow encrypts passwords with Fernet. Scope: Apache Airflow. Reviewed October 4, 2026.