Load Open Topo Data data to DuckDB

Open Topo Data is a REST API for accessing elevation data at specific geographic locations. Everything needed to build a working Open Topo Data → 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 Open Topo Data 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 Open Topo Data 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 Open Topo Data 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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Open Topo Data API at a glance

These values come from the Open Topo Data API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Open Topo Data API?

The public Open Topo Data API does not require any authentication or headers.

No credentials required. The Open Topo Data API is public, so there is nothing to obtain and nothing to add to .dlt/secrets.toml — the pipeline above runs as written.

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What Open Topo Data data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Open Topo Data endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Open Topo Data records?

The Open Topo Data 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": "elevation", "endpoint": {
    "path": "v1/{dataset_name}",
    # 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 Open Topo Data pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading v1/<dataset_name> and datasets from the Open Topo Data API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def open_topo_data_source():
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.opentopodata.org",
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "elevation", "endpoint": {"path": "v1/{dataset_name}", "data_selector": "results"}},
            {"name": "datasets", "endpoint": {"path": "v1/datasets"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_open_topo_data_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="open_topo_data_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="open_topo_data_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(open_topo_data_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_open_topo_data_to_duckdb()

Run it with python open_topo_data_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 Open Topo Data 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("open_topo_data_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.elevation.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM open_topo_data_data.elevation LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the Open Topo Data 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 Open Topo Data 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 Open Topo Data 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