Load Quickbase data to DuckDB

Quickbase is a platform for building custom business applications, providing a JSON RESTful API for app management, data manipulation, and automation. Everything needed to build a working Quickbase → 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 Quickbase 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 Quickbase 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 Quickbase 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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Quickbase API at a glance

These values come from the Quickbase API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Quickbase API?

Authentication is performed by passing a user token in the Authorization header. The token format is 'QB-USER-TOKEN xxxxxx_xxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'. Additionally, the 'QB-Realm-Hostname' header is required for all requests.

1. Get your credentials

To obtain a Quickbase user token: 1. Log in to your Quickbase account. 2. Navigate to your user profile settings (My Preferences). 3. Look for the 'User Tokens' section. 4. Select 'Create new user token'. 5. Provide a description, select the specific applications the token should access, and save. 6. Copy the token immediately, as some account security settings may prevent you from viewing it again after the initial creation. For dlt integrations, this token is typically passed in the request header as 'QB-USER-TOKEN' alongside the 'QB-REALM-HOSTNAME' header.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.quickbase_source]
qb_user_token = "your_user_token_here"
qb_realm_hostname = "your_realm.quickbase.com"

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 Quickbase data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Quickbase endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Quickbase records?

The Quickbase 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": "records_query", "endpoint": {
    "path": "records/query",
    # 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 Quickbase pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading records/query and records/modifiedSince from the Quickbase API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def quickbase_source(user_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.quickbase.com/v1",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": user_token, "name": "Authorization", "location": "header"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "records_query", "endpoint": {"path": "records/query", "data_selector": "data"}},
            {"name": "records_modified_since", "endpoint": {"path": "records/modifiedSince", "data_selector": "data"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_quickbase_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="quickbase_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="quickbase_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(quickbase_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_quickbase_to_duckdb()

Run it with python quickbase_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 Quickbase 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("quickbase_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.records_query.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM quickbase_data.records_query LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the Quickbase 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 Quickbase 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 Quickbase 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