Chargedesk Python API Docs | dltHub

ChargeDesk is a hosted billing and customer support platform that provides an API to create, list, and manage charges, customers, subscriptions, products, webhooks and logs. The REST API base URL is https://api.chargedesk.com/v1 and all requests require HTTP Basic auth using your secret key as the username..

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading Chargedesk data in under 10 minutes.

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What data can I load from Chargedesk?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Chargedesk:

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How do I authenticate with the Chargedesk API?

ChargeDesk uses HTTP Basic Authentication where your secret API key is passed as the HTTP Basic username (password not required). Example curl uses -u YOUR_SECRET_KEY: . Include this by setting the Authorization header via Basic auth (username = secret key, blank password).

1. Get your credentials

1. Sign in to your ChargeDesk account. 2) Open the Connect/API page at https://chargedesk.com/connect/api. 3) Enable API access for the company you want to use. 4) Copy the company's secret key (use as HTTP Basic username). 5) Store it in your dlt secrets (see secrets_toml_example).

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.chargedesk_source]
secret_key = "your_secret_key_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.

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How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

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uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

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dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

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dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the Chargedesk API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

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python chargedesk_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

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Pipeline chargedesk_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset chargedesk_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/chargedesk.duckdb location to store data
Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

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dlt pipeline chargedesk_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.

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Python pipeline example

This example loads charges and customers from the Chargedesk API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

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

@dlt.source
def chargedesk_source(secret_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.chargedesk.com/v1",
            "auth": {
                "type": "http_basic",
                "secret_key": secret_key,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "charges", "endpoint": {"path": "charges", "data_selector": "data"}},
            {"name": "customers", "endpoint": {"path": "customers", "data_selector": "data"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="chargedesk_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="chargedesk_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(chargedesk_source())
    print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.

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How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("chargedesk_pipeline").dataset()
sessions_df = data.charges.df()
print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

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SELECT * FROM chargedesk_data.charges LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("chargedesk_pipeline").dataset()
data.charges.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.

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What destinations can I load Chargedesk data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.

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Troubleshooting

Authentication failures

If you receive 401/403, verify you are using HTTP Basic auth with the company's secret key as the username and empty password. Ensure API access is enabled for the company at https://chargedesk.com/connect/api.

Rate limiting

ChargeDesk enforces a limit of 60 requests per minute. Exceeding this results in HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header; pause and retry after the specified seconds.

Pagination and data selectors

List endpoints return paginated responses with count, offset and a data array containing records (e.g. "data":[...]). Some endpoints (e.g. GET /charges/{id}, /customers/{id}, /products/{id}) return single objects rather than a data array. For charge items, the items are under the "items" key.

Ensure that the API key is valid to avoid 401 Unauthorized errors. Also, verify endpoint paths and parameters to avoid 404 Not Found errors.

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Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

• data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
• dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.

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dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install
dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

• How to deploy a pipeline
• How to explore your data in marimo Notebooks
• How to query your data in Python with dataset
• Join the dlt community on Slack