SharePoint Python API Docs | dltHub

Build a SharePoint-to-database pipeline in Python using dlt with AI Workbench support for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

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SharePoint REST API provides RESTful endpoints to interact with SharePoint sites, lists, and documents using the OData standard. The REST API base URL is https://{site_url}/_api and all requests require a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

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 add "dlt[hub]" and start loading SharePoint data in under 10 minutes.


What data can I load from SharePoint?

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

ResourceEndpointMethodData selectorDescription
web_lists_api/web/listsGETvalueRetrieves all lists on a site
list_items_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('Title')/itemsGETvalueRetrieves items within a specific list
site_metadata_api/siteGETRetrieves site collection metadata
web_metadata_api/webGETRetrieves site metadata
user_profiles_api/SP.UserProfiles.PeopleManagerGETAccesses user profile functionality

How do I authenticate with the SharePoint API?

Requests require an Authorization header containing a Bearer token. For non-OAuth operations, a form digest value must be obtained from the /_api/contextinfo endpoint and passed in the X-RequestDigest header for POST requests.

1. Get your credentials

SharePoint does not use API keys for authentication. It requires OAuth 2.0 via Microsoft Entra ID. To obtain credentials: 1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center. 2. Register a new application under 'App registrations'. 3. In the application's 'Certificates & secrets' section, create a new client secret (or upload a public key for certificate-based authentication). 4. In 'API permissions', add Microsoft Graph or SharePoint Online permissions (e.g., 'Sites.Read.All'). 5. Have a global or SharePoint admin grant 'Admin consent' for the tenant. 6. Use the Tenant ID, Client ID, and Client Secret to request an OAuth 2.0 access token via the Microsoft identity platform endpoint (https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant-id}/oauth2/v2.0/token). The resulting access token must be passed in the HTTP Authorization header as 'Bearer {token}'.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

[sources.sharepoint_source] tenant_id = "your_tenant_id_here" client_id = "your_client_id_here" client_secret = "your_client_secret_here" scope = "https://your-domain.sharepoint.com/.default"

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 init uv add "dlt[hub]"

1. Install the dlt AI harness:

uv run dlthub 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:

uv run dlthub ai toolkit install rest-api-pipeline

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 SharePoint 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:

uv run python sharepoint_pipeline.py

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

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

Inspect your pipeline and data:

uv run dlthub 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 /_api/web/lists and /_api/web/currentUser from the SharePoint 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 sharepoint_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value): config: RESTAPIConfig = { "client": { "base_url": "https://{site_url}/_api", "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": access_token}, }, "resources": [ {"name": "list_items", "endpoint": {"path": "_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('{list_title}')/items", "data_selector": "value"}}, {"name": "web_lists", "endpoint": {"path": "_api/web/lists", "data_selector": "value"}} ], } yield from rest_api_resources(config) def get_data() -> None: pipeline = dlt.pipeline( pipeline_name="sharepoint_pipeline", destination="duckdb", dataset_name="sharepoint_data", ) load_info = pipeline.run(sharepoint_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("sharepoint_pipeline").dataset() sessions_df = data.list_items.df() print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

SELECT * FROM sharepoint_data.list_items LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("sharepoint_pipeline").dataset() data.list_items.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 SharePoint data to?

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

DestinationExample 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 harness:

  • data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
  • dlthub-platform — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.
uv run dlthub ai toolkit install data-exploration uv run dlthub ai toolkit install dlthub-platform

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