Load Espo-crm data to DuckDB

EspoCRM is a CRM platform that provides a REST API for connecting to websites and business systems for automated record management. Everything needed to build a working Espo-crm → 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.

---

Build your Espo-crm 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 Espo-crm 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 Espo-crm 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.

---

Espo-crm API at a glance

These values come from the Espo-crm API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

---

How do I authenticate with the Espo-crm API?

The API supports API Key authentication via the X-Api-Key header, HMAC authentication via the X-Hmac-Authorization header, and a custom token-based flow using the Espo-Authorization header. For the Espo-Authorization header, the value must be the Base64-encoded string of 'username:passwordOrToken'.

1. Get your credentials

1. Log in to your EspoCRM instance as an administrator. 2. Navigate to Administration > Roles and create a new role with the required permissions for the API integration. 3. Navigate to Administration > API Users. 4. Create a new API User, assign the role created in step 2, and select the 'API Key' authentication method. 5. Save the user to generate the API key, then copy the key from the user detail view.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

Copy
[sources.espo_crm_source]
api_key = "REPLACE_ME"

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.

---

What Espo-crm data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Espo-crm endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

---

How do I load only new Espo-crm records?

The Espo-crm 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.

Copy
{"name": "account", "endpoint": {
    "path": "Account",
    # 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.

---

What does the generated Espo-crm pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading App/user and [Entity_Type] (e.g., Contact, Lead, Account) from the Espo-crm API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def espo_crm_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://your-espocrm-site/api/v1/",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": api_key},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "account", "endpoint": {"path": "Account", "data_selector": "list"}},
            {"name": "contact", "endpoint": {"path": "Contact", "data_selector": "list"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_espo_crm_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="espo_crm_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="espo_crm_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(espo_crm_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_espo_crm_to_duckdb()

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

---

How do I query Espo-crm 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):

Copy
import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("espo_crm_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.account.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

Copy
SELECT * FROM espo_crm_data.account LIMIT 10;

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

---

How do I deploy the Espo-crm 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 Espo-crm loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

---

What other destinations can I load Espo-crm 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.

---

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