Load Zoho-projects data to DuckDB

Zoho Projects is a project management platform that provides a REST API for managing projects, tasks, time logs, and users. Everything needed to build a working Zoho-projects → 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 Zoho-projects 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 Zoho-projects 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 Zoho-projects 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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Zoho-projects API at a glance

These values come from the Zoho-projects API documentation. Check them against the vendor's current reference before relying on them in production.

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How do I authenticate with the Zoho-projects API?

Zoho Projects uses OAuth 2.0. The access token must be included in every request in the 'Authorization' header with the format 'Zoho-oauthtoken {access_token}'.

1. Get your credentials

1. Navigate to the Zoho Developer Console.\n2. Click 'Add Client' to register your application.\n3. Select the appropriate client type (typically 'Self Client' for backend/server-to-server integrations).\n4. Note the provided 'Client ID' and 'Client Secret'.\n5. For 'Self Client' flows, generate a grant token. For web-based apps, use the authorization code flow (redirect to Zoho's auth URL) to receive a grant code.\n6. Exchange your grant token/code for an access token and refresh token by sending a POST request to the Zoho Accounts token endpoint (e.g., https://accounts.zoho.com/oauth/v2/token) including your client_id, client_secret, redirect_uri (if applicable), and grant_type.\n7. Use the 'access_token' in the 'Authorization' header of your API requests formatted as 'Zoho-oauthtoken {access_token}'.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.zoho_projects_source]
client_id = "your_client_id"
client_secret = "your_client_secret"
refresh_token = "your_refresh_token"

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 Zoho-projects data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Zoho-projects endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Zoho-projects records?

Zoho-projects exposes last_modified_time on portal/[PORTALID]/projects, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "projects", "endpoint": {
    "path": "portal/[PORTALID]/projects",
    "data_selector": "projects",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "last_modified_time", "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 Zoho-projects pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading /portals and /projects from the Zoho-projects API into DuckDB:

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

@dlt.source
def zoho_projects_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://projectsapi.zoho.com/restapi/portal/",
            "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": access_token},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "projects", "endpoint": {"path": "portal/[PORTALID]/projects", "data_selector": "projects"}},
            {"name": "tasks", "endpoint": {"path": "portal/[PORTALID]/projects/[PROJECTID]/tasks", "data_selector": "tasks"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_zoho_projects_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="zoho_projects_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="zoho_projects_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(zoho_projects_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_zoho_projects_to_duckdb()

Run it with python zoho_projects_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 Zoho-projects 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("zoho_projects_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.projects.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM zoho_projects_data.projects LIMIT 10;

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

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How do I deploy the Zoho-projects 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 Zoho-projects 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 Zoho-projects 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