Load iLoveAPI data to DuckDB

iLoveAPI is a REST API that provides a suite of tools for processing, converting, and managing PDF and image files. Everything needed to build a working iLoveAPI → 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 iLoveAPI 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 iLoveAPI 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 iLoveAPI 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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iLoveAPI API at a glance

These values come from the iLoveAPI API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the iLoveAPI API?

Authentication is performed via JSON Web Tokens (JWT) sent in the Authorization header as a Bearer token (e.g., 'Authorization: Bearer {signed_token}'). The token is generated using a secret key.

1. Get your credentials

1. Navigate to the iLoveAPI developer portal (https://www.iloveapi.com/) and register for an account if you do not have one. 2. Log in to your personal administration console. 3. Navigate to the API Keys area for your project (a 'Default Project' is created automatically upon registration). 4. Copy your 'Public Key' and 'Secret Key' from this dashboard. These keys are used to authenticate your project's connection to the API servers.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.iloveapi_source]
# Place these in [sources.iloveapi_source]
public_key = "your_public_key_here"
secret_key = "your_secret_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 iLoveAPI data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the iLoveAPI endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new iLoveAPI records?

The iLoveAPI 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": "tasks", "endpoint": {
    "path": "task",
    # 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 iLoveAPI pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading start and task from the iLoveAPI API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def iloveapi_source(token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.ilovepdf.com/v1",
            "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": token},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "tasks", "endpoint": {"path": "task"}},
            {"name": "signature_list", "endpoint": {"path": "signature/list"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_iloveapi_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="iloveapi_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="iloveapi_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(iloveapi_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_iloveapi_to_duckdb()

Run it with python iloveapi_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 iLoveAPI 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("iloveapi_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.tasks.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM iloveapi_data.tasks LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the iLoveAPI 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 iLoveAPI 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 iLoveAPI 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