Core Plugins and tasks Loop

Core Plugins and tasks Loop

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Execute child tasks for each value in a list.

Renders values (list, map, map, URI, or expression) and runs the child task group once per item. The current item is available as item.value; item.index exposes the index; if the values was a map, the key is available as item.key. It values was an internal storage URI, the loop will perform one iteration per line.

Control parallelism with concurrencyLimit (0 = unlimited, 1 = fully serialized, N = up to N concurrent task groups). To run tasks inside each group in parallel, wrap them in a Parallel task.

Each loop iteration will execute in an isolated context, to access any loop iteration task outputs outside of the loop, you need to define outputs.

yaml
type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop

The {{ item.value }} from the loop task is available to all tasks of the loop, even nested.

yaml
id: for_loop_example
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: loop
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
    values: ["value 1", "value 2", "value 3"]
    tasks:
      - id: before_if
        type: io.kestra.plugin.core.debug.Return
        format: "Before if {{ item.value }}"
      - id: if
        type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.If
        condition: '{{ item.value == "value 2" }}'
        then:
          - id: after_if
            type: io.kestra.plugin.core.debug.Return
            format: "After if {{ item.value }}"

This flow uses YAML-style array for values. The task loop iterates over a list of values and executes the return child task for each value. The concurrencyLimit property is set to 2, so the return task will run concurrently for the first two values in the list at first. The return task will run for the next two values only after the task runs for the first two values have completed.

yaml
id: for_each_value
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: for_each
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
    values:
      - value 1
      - value 2
      - value 3
      - value 4
    concurrencyLimit: 2
    tasks:
      - id: return
        type: io.kestra.plugin.core.debug.Return
        format: "{{ task.id }} with value {{ item.value }}"

This example shows how to run tasks in parallel for each value in the list. All child tasks of the parallel task will run in parallel. However, due to the concurrencyLimit property set to 2, only two parallel task groups will run at any given time.

yaml
id: parallel_tasks_example
namespace: company.team

tasks:
  - id: for_each
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
    values: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
    concurrencyLimit: 2
    tasks:
      - id: parallel
        type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Parallel
        tasks:
        - id: log
          type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
          message: Processing {{ item.value }}
        - id: shell
          type: io.kestra.plugin.scripts.shell.Commands
          commands:
            - sleep {{ item.value }}

This example demonstrates processing data across nested loops of S3 buckets, years, and months. It generates structured identifiers (e.g., bucket1_2025_March) by combining values from each loop level, while accessing parent loop values like years and buckets, which can be useful for partitioned storage paths or time-based datasets. The flow uses dynamic expressions referencing parent context.

yaml
id: loop_multiple_times
namespace: company.team

inputs:
  - id: s3_buckets
    type: ARRAY
    itemType: STRING
    defaults:
      - bucket1
      - bucket2

  - id: years
    type: ARRAY
    itemType: INT
    defaults:
      - 2025
      - 2026

  - id: months
    type: ARRAY
    itemType: STRING
    defaults:
      - March
      - April

tasks:
  - id: buckets
    type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
    values: "{{inputs.s3_buckets}}"
    tasks:
      - id: year
        type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
        values: "{{inputs.years}}"
        tasks:
          - id: month
            type: io.kestra.plugin.core.flow.Loop
            values: "{{inputs.months}}"
            tasks:
              - id: full_table_name
                type: io.kestra.plugin.core.log.Log
                message: |
                  Full table name: {{item.parents[1].value }}_{{item.parent.value}}_{{item.value}}
                  Direct/current loop (months): {{item.value}}
                  Value of loop one higher up (years): {{item.parents[0].value}}
                  Further up (table types): {{item.parents[1].value}}
Properties
Min items1

The list of values for which Kestra will execute a group of tasks

Values can be defined as:

  • A list of objects, individual objects will be coalesced to strings
  • A string which will be deserialized as a JSON array
  • An ION file URI, each line will be deserialized as an ION object then coalesced to a string
Default1
Minimum>= 0

The number of concurrent task groups for each value in the values array

A concurrencyLimit of 0 means no limit — all task groups run in parallel.

A concurrencyLimit of 1 means full serialization — only one task group runs at a time, in order.

A concurrencyLimit greater than 1 allows up to the specified number of task groups to run in parallel.

List of tasks to run if any tasks failed on this FlowableTask.

DefaultAUTO
Possible Values
AUTOFETCHSTORE

Specifies how to fetch outputs from loop iterations

AUTO: check the values, if it comes from an internal storage URI, will resolves to STORE, otherwise, will resolved to FETCH FETCH: fetch outputs from loop iterations and make them directly accessible from the execution context STORE: store outputs in the internal storage from loop iterations

Output values available and exposed outside the loop.

They can be fetched from the execution context using the outputs output of the loop task run.

Definitions
id*Requiredstring
Validation RegExp^[a-zA-Z0-9][.a-zA-Z0-9_-]*
Min length1
type*Requiredstring
Possible Values
STRINGSELECTINTFLOATBOOLDATETIMEDATETIMEDURATIONFILEJSONIONURISECRETARRAYMULTISELECTYAMLEMAILFORMREUSABLE_INPUTS
value*Requiredstring
descriptionstring
displayNamestring
requiredboolean
Defaulttrue

Flag specifying whether to fail the current task if any loop iteration fails or is killed.