Load AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) data to DuckDB

AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) is a threat intelligence platform that provides reputation data for IPs, domains, and URLs through its REST API. Everything needed to build a working AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API at a glance

These values come from the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API?

The API requires an API key passed in the X-OTX-API-KEY HTTP header for authenticated requests.

1. Get your credentials

1. Navigate to the AlienVault OTX portal at https://otx.alienvault.com/ and log in or create an account. 2. Click on your profile icon or avatar in the top-right corner of the dashboard. 3. Select Settings from the dropdown menu. 4. Locate the API Key or API Integration section on the settings page to view your personal OTX API key. 5. Copy and store this key securely, as it will be required for authenticated API requests via the X-OTX-API-KEY HTTP header.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_source]
api_key = "your_otx_api_key_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) records?

The AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API reference does not document a timestamp or sequence field for these endpoints, so there is nothing to advertise here as verified. Pick a field from the endpoints table above that increases with every write, then set it as the cursor_path.

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{"name": "pulses_subscribed", "endpoint": {
    "path": "api/v1/pulses/subscribed",
    # Replace with a field that increases on every write.
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "REPLACE_ME", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading /api/v1/pulses and /api/v1/indicators from the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://otx.alienvault.com/api",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": api_key, "name": "X-OTX-API-KEY", "location": "header"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "pulses_subscribed", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v1/pulses/subscribed", "data_selector": "results"}},
            {"name": "pulses_events", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v1/pulses/events", "data_selector": "results"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_to_duckdb()

Run it with python alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.pulses_subscribed.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM alienvault_open_threat_exchange_otx_data.pulses_subscribed LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack