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Unity Catalog function tools with HTTP connection

note

To connect agents to external services, Databricks recommends MCP Services or the Unity Catalog connections proxy. UC function tools that wrap http_request remain supported but are no longer the recommended approach.

You can create a Unity Catalog function that wraps http_request() to call external services. This approach is useful for SQL-based tool definitions.

Requirements​

A Unity Catalog HTTP connection for the external service. Reference it by name in the http_request() function's conn parameter.

Create a function tool with http_request()​

The following example creates a Unity Catalog function tool that posts a message to Slack:

SQL
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION main.default.slack_post_message(
  text STRING COMMENT 'message content'
)
RETURNS STRING
COMMENT 'Sends a Slack message by passing in the message and returns the response received from the external service.'
RETURN (http_request(
  conn => 'test_sql_slack',
  method => 'POST',
  path => '/api/chat.postMessage',
  json => to_json(named_struct(
    'channel', "C032G2DAH3",
    'text', text
  ))
)).text

See CREATE FUNCTION (SQL, Python, Scala, and Java).

note

SQL access with http_request is blocked for the User-to-Machine Per User and Dynamic Client Registration connection types. Use the Python Databricks SDK instead.

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