topic Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App? in Data Engineering

How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

adam_mich — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 21:47:40 GMT

I am developing a Databricks application using the Streamlit package. I was able to get a "hello world" app deployed successfully, but now I am trying to pass data that exists in the dbfs on the same instance. I try to read a csv saved to the dbfs but get a file not found error. I am assuming there is a virtual environment being setup during deployment and there is an additional step I need to do to configure the path. Thanks in advance.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

Walter_C — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:39:23 GMT

Hello Adam,

So you are running something similar to:

import streamlit as st import pandas as pd # Path to the CSV file in DBFS file_path = '/dbfs/path/to/your/file.csv' # Read the CSV file df = pd.read_csv(file_path) # Display the dataframe in Streamlit st.write(df)

And it is resulting in this file not found issue?

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

adam_mich — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:44:51 GMT

Yes, exactly. To add more context, the read_csv() line works if I just run it in a notebook with the same path, but it does not work once I try and deploy the application.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

Walter_C — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:35:57 GMT

What if you try to list the file using dbutils.fs.ls("dbfs:/mnt/path/to/data") does it list it?

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

adam_mich — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 15:02:28 GMT

Well, I can't even use dbutils in the app. When I try that, I get a NameError name 'dbutils' is not defined error. Again, this just works in a notebook but not the app.

If I try and do this:

os.listdir('/dbfs/'), it again does not find that directory.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

matteodefelice — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:41:39 GMT

Have you found a solution? As far as I can see, the apps run in an environment where DBFS is not mounted.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

matteodefelice — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:22:26 GMT

The environment where the app runs does not have the following directories in the root folder:

['/media', '/libx32', '/var', '/sbin', '/bin', '/srv', '/proc', '/opt', '/home', '/etc', '/lib', '/usr', '/boot', '/tmp', '/root', '/sys', '/run', '/dev', '/lib64', '/lib32', '/mnt', '/app', '/databricks']

And `/mnt` is empty.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

matteodefelice — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 08:48:04 GMT

Hello Walter,

did you have the possibility to look into this?

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

saurabh18cs — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:42:04 GMT

Ensure that the environment where Streamlit is running has access to the DBFS paths. This is typically handled by Databricks, but if you are running Streamlit outside of Databricks, you may need to configure access to DBFS.

If you are running Streamlit outside of Databricks, consider using Databricks Connect to interact with Databricks resources

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

matteodefelice — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:48:39 GMT

That's the point. I am running streamlit from a Databricks App, so I was wondering if they can propose the "right" way to access DBFS. Or if they think that the way to exchange data should be using an SQL Warehouse.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

txti — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 19:39:15 GMT

I have the identical problem in Databricks Apps. I have tried...

Reading from DBFS path using mount version `/dbfs/myfolder/myfile` and protocol `dbfs:/myfolder/myfile`
Reading from Unity Volumes `/Volumes/mycatalog/mydatabase/myfolder/myfile`
- Also made sure that the App principal had rights to read from the specific Unity Volume
Reading from S3 path `s3://mybucket/mypath/myfile`

None of these methods worked for me and cannot use Apps until I have a solution for this.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

old_student — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 16:01:45 GMT

I’m also trying to find a solution. I’ve created folders and placed files in them, which I'm accessing from a Streamlit app. The app launches without any issues, but it’s unable to access the files stored in DBFS. I’d really appreciate it if you could share your solution. Thank you!

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

Sharanya13 — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 23:33:37 GMT

Why can't you have the files loaded from UC volumes and reference them from the Apps?

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

bferrell — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:40:52 GMT

I would love to know why apps cannot reference UC volumes as well.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

Snentley — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:11:36 GMT

I don’t understand, there still seems to be no solution for this.
If we can’t read/write files from DBFS, volumes, or workspace, what’s the point?

Yes, SQL connectors work, but what if we need to do anything beyond that?
Even saving a simple edited file becomes impossible.

These issues have been reported for over 8 months and still no progress.
Why is this still unresolved?

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

old_student — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 07:01:43 GMT

I used Azure Blob Storage, and this resolved the issue. Our app now contains Python files in the Databricks app environment that have access to Azure Blob Storage using Azure credentials.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

old_student — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 07:05:28 GMT

I used Azure Blob Storage, and this resolved the issue. Our app now contains Python files in the Databricks environment app that have access to Azure Blob Storage using Azure credentials.

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

gokkul — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:16:11 GMT

Did you add the volumes as an app resource to app config ? And also you need to provide the needed privileges for the app service principal or pat

Re: How to Pass Data to a Databricks App?

swarnavenu — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:53:20 GMT

How did you use blob storage and how did it worked?