Cisco Secure Email Python API Docs | dltHub
Build a Cisco Secure Email-to-database pipeline in Python using dlt with AI Workbench support for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.
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Cisco Secure Email provides RESTful API for secure email access and management. The API documentation is available at https://docs.ces.cisco.com/docs/api. Note that some features may be restricted. The REST API base URL is https://{appliance}:{port}/esa/api/v2.0/, https://api.us.etd.cisco.com/, https://api.de.etd.cisco.com/ and All requests require either Basic authentication or a Bearer JWT token..
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 Cisco Secure Email data in under 10 minutes.
What data can I load from Cisco Secure Email?
Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Cisco Secure Email:
| ## Endpoints |
|---|
| Resource |
| ---------- |
| url_lists |
| health |
| filters |
| quarantine |
| message_summary |
| Note: All responses embed record arrays under the top‑level "data" key. |
How do I authenticate with the Cisco Secure Email API?
Authentication can be performed with HTTP Basic (Base64‑encoded username:password) or with a Bearer JWT token; the token is obtained via the /v1/oauth/token endpoint and sent in the Authorization header.
1. Get your credentials
- Log in to the Cisco Secure Email Cloud portal.
- Navigate to Administration → API Access.
- Click Create New OAuth Client.
- Provide a name and select the required scopes (e.g., read, write).
- After creation, copy the generated Client ID and Client Secret.
- Store these values securely; they will be used to request a JWT token via the /v1/oauth/token endpoint.
2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml
[sources.cisco_secure_email_source] client_id = "your_client_id_here" client_secret = "your_client_secret_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.
How do I set up and run the pipeline?
Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"
1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:
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:
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 Cisco Secure Email 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:
python cisco_secure_email_pipeline.py
If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:
Pipeline cisco_secure_email_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds 1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset cisco_secure_email_data The duckdb destination used duckdb:/cisco_secure_email.duckdb location to store data Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs
Inspect your pipeline and data:
dlt pipeline cisco_secure_email_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.
Python pipeline example
This example loads url_lists and health from the Cisco Secure Email API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:
import dlt from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources @dlt.source def cisco_secure_email_source(client_id=dlt.secrets.value): config: RESTAPIConfig = { "client": { "base_url": "https://{appliance}:{port}/esa/api/v2.0/, https://api.us.etd.cisco.com/, https://api.de.etd.cisco.com/", "auth": { "type": "bearer", "token": client_id, }, }, "resources": [ {"name": "url_lists", "endpoint": {"path": "config/url_lists", "data_selector": "data"}}, {"name": "health", "endpoint": {"path": "health", "data_selector": "data"}} ], } yield from rest_api_resources(config) def get_data() -> None: pipeline = dlt.pipeline( pipeline_name="cisco_secure_email_pipeline", destination="duckdb", dataset_name="cisco_secure_email_data", ) load_info = pipeline.run(cisco_secure_email_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.
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):
import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("cisco_secure_email_pipeline").dataset() sessions_df = data.url_lists.df() print(sessions_df.head())
SQL (DuckDB example):
SELECT * FROM cisco_secure_email_data.url_lists LIMIT 10;
In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:
import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("cisco_secure_email_pipeline").dataset() data.url_lists.df().head()
See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.
What destinations can I load Cisco Secure Email data to?
dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:
| Destination | Example value |
|---|---|
| DuckDB (local, default) | "duckdb" |
| PostgreSQL | "postgres" |
| BigQuery | "bigquery" |
| Snowflake | "snowflake" |
| Redshift | "redshift" |
| Databricks | "databricks" |
| Filesystem (S3, GCS, Azure) | "filesystem" |
Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.
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.
dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install
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