Loading Data from HubSpot to Timescale using dlt in Python

tip

We will be using the dlt PostgreSQL destination to connect to Timescale. You can get the connection string for your timescale database as described in the Timescale Docs.

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HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) software and inbound marketing platform that helps businesses attract visitors, engage customers, and close leads. Timescale is engineered to handle demanding workloads, such as time series, vector, events, and analytics data. It is built on PostgreSQL and comes with expert support at no extra charge. Using the open-source python library called dlt, you can load data from HubSpot into Timescale. This documentation provides a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this integration seamlessly. For more details on HubSpot, visit here.

dlt Key Features

• Pipeline Metadata: dlt pipelines leverage metadata to provide governance capabilities, including load IDs for tracking data loads and facilitating data lineage and traceability. Read more.
• Schema Enforcement and Curation: dlt empowers users to enforce and curate schemas, ensuring data consistency and quality. Read more.
• Scaling and Finetuning: dlt offers several mechanisms and configuration options to scale up and finetune pipelines, including parallel execution and memory buffer adjustments. Read more.
• Schema Evolution: dlt enables proactive governance by alerting users to schema changes, allowing them to take necessary actions. Read more.
• Community and Support: Join the dlt Slack community or book a call with a support engineer for help deploying sources or running them in your data stack. Join our Slack community or book a call.

Getting started with your pipeline locally

0. Prerequisites

dlt requires Python 3.8 or higher. Additionally, you need to have the pip package manager installed, and we recommend using a virtual environment to manage your dependencies. You can learn more about preparing your computer for dlt in our installation reference.

1. Install dlt

First you need to install the dlt library with the correct extras for Timescale:

pip install "dlt[postgres]"

The dlt cli has a useful command to get you started with any combination of source and destination. For this example, we want to load data from HubSpot to Timescale. You can run the following commands to create a starting point for loading data from HubSpot to Timescale:

# create a new directory
mkdir hubspot_pipeline
cd hubspot_pipeline
# initialize a new pipeline with your source and destination
dlt init hubspot postgres
# install the required dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

The last command will install the required dependencies for your pipeline. The dependencies are listed in the requirements.txt:

dlt[postgres]>=0.3.25

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

hubspot_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── hubspot/                   # folder with source specific files
│   └── ...
├── hubspot_pipeline.py        # your main pipeline script
├── requirements.txt         # dependencies for your pipeline
└── .gitignore               # ignore files for git (not required)

2. Configuring your source and destination credentials

The dlt cli will have created a .dlt directory in your project folder. This directory contains a config.toml file and a secrets.toml file that you can use to configure your pipeline. The automatically created version of these files look like this:

generated config.toml

# put your configuration values here

[runtime]
log_level="WARNING"  # the system log level of dlt
# use the dlthub_telemetry setting to enable/disable anonymous usage data reporting, see https://dlthub.com/docs/telemetry
dlthub_telemetry = true

generated secrets.toml

# put your secret values and credentials here. do not share this file and do not push it to github

[sources.hubspot]
api_key = "api_key" # please set me up!

[destination.postgres]
dataset_name = "dataset_name" # please set me up!

[destination.postgres.credentials]
database = "database" # please set me up!
password = "password" # please set me up!
username = "username" # please set me up!
host = "host" # please set me up!
port = 5432
connect_timeout = 15

2.1. Adjust the generated code to your usecase

Further help setting up your source and destinations

• Read more about setting up the HubSpot source in our docs.
• Read more about setting up the Timescale destination in our docs.

3. Running your pipeline for the first time

The dlt cli has also created a main pipeline script for you at hubspot_pipeline.py, as well as a folder hubspot that contains additional python files for your source. These files are your local copies which you can modify to fit your needs. In some cases you may find that you only need to do small changes to your pipelines or add some configurations, in other cases these files can serve as a working starting point for your code, but will need to be adjusted to do what you need them to do.

The main pipeline script will look something like this:

from typing import List
import dlt

from hubspot import hubspot, hubspot_events_for_objects, THubspotObjectType


def load_crm_data() -> None:
    """
    This function loads all resources from HubSpot CRM

    Returns:
        None
    """

    # Create a DLT pipeline object with the pipeline name, dataset name, and destination database type
    # Add full_refresh=(True or False) if you need your pipeline to create the dataset in your destination
    p = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="hubspot",
        dataset_name="hubspot_dataset",
        destination='postgres',
    )

    # Run the pipeline with the HubSpot source connector
    info = p.run(hubspot())

    # Print information about the pipeline run
    print(info)


def load_crm_data_with_history() -> None:
    """
    Loads all HubSpot CRM resources and property change history for each entity.
    The history entries are loaded to a tables per resource `{resource_name}_property_history`, e.g. `contacts_property_history`

    Returns:
        None
    """

    # Create a DLT pipeline object with the pipeline name, dataset name, and destination database type
    # Add full_refresh=(True or False) if you need your pipeline to create the dataset in your destination
    p = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="hubspot",
        dataset_name="hubspot_dataset",
        destination='postgres',
    )

    # Configure the source with `include_history` to enable property history load, history is disabled by default
    data = hubspot(include_history=True)

    # Run the pipeline with the HubSpot source connector
    info = p.run(data)

    # Print information about the pipeline run
    print(info)


def load_crm_objects_with_custom_properties() -> None:
    """
    Loads CRM objects, reading only properties defined by the user.
    """

    # Create a DLT pipeline object with the pipeline name,
    # dataset name, properties to read and destination database
    # type Add full_refresh=(True or False) if you need your
    # pipeline to create the dataset in your destination
    p = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="hubspot",
        dataset_name="hubspot_dataset",
        destination='postgres',
    )

    source = hubspot()

    # By default, all the custom properties of a CRM object are extracted,
    # ignoring those driven by Hubspot (prefixed with `hs_`).

    # To read fields in addition to the custom ones:
    # source.contacts.bind(props=["date_of_birth", "degree"])

    # To read only two particular fields:
    source.contacts.bind(props=["date_of_birth", "degree"], include_custom_props=False)

    # Run the pipeline with the HubSpot source connector
    info = p.run(source)

    # Print information about the pipeline run
    print(info)


def load_web_analytics_events(
    object_type: THubspotObjectType, object_ids: List[str]
) -> None:
    """
    This function loads web analytics events for a list objects in `object_ids` of type `object_type`

    Returns:
        None
    """

    # Create a DLT pipeline object with the pipeline name, dataset name, and destination database type
    p = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="hubspot",
        dataset_name="hubspot_dataset",
        destination='postgres',
        full_refresh=False,
    )

    # you can get many resources by calling this function for various object types
    resource = hubspot_events_for_objects(object_type, object_ids)
    # and load them together passing resources in the list
    info = p.run([resource])

    # Print information about the pipeline run
    print(info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Call the functions to load HubSpot data into the database with and without company events enabled
    load_crm_data()
    load_crm_data_with_history()
    load_web_analytics_events("company", ["7086461639", "7086464459"])
    load_crm_objects_with_custom_properties()

Provided you have set up your credentials, you can run your pipeline like a regular python script with the following command:

python hubspot_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result

You can now inspect the state of your pipeline with the dlt cli:

dlt pipeline hubspot info

You can also use streamlit to inspect the contents of your Timescale destination for this:

# install streamlit
pip install streamlit
# run the streamlit app for your pipeline with the dlt cli:
dlt pipeline hubspot show

5. Next steps to get your pipeline running in production

One of the beauties of dlt is, that we are just a plain Python library, so you can run your pipeline in any environment that supports Python >= 3.8. We have a couple of helpers and guides in our docs to get you there:

The Deploy section will show you how to deploy your pipeline to

• Deploy with Github Actions: Learn how to deploy your pipeline using Github Actions, a CI/CD runner that you can use for free.
• Deploy with Airflow and Google Composer: Follow this guide to deploy your pipeline with Airflow and Google Composer, a managed Airflow environment provided by Google.
• Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Discover how to deploy your pipeline using Google Cloud Functions for a serverless deployment approach.
• More Deployment Options: Explore other deployment options and detailed guides in the dlt deployment walkthroughs.

The running in production section will teach you about:

• How to Monitor your pipeline: Learn how to effectively monitor your dlt pipelines in production to ensure they run smoothly. How to Monitor your pipeline
• Set up alerts: Set up alerts to get notified about the status and any issues in your dlt pipelines. Set up alerts
• And set up tracing: Implement tracing to get detailed insights and track the performance of your dlt pipelines. And set up tracing

Available Sources and Resources

For this verified source the following sources and resources are available

Source hubspot

Hubspot source provides data on companies, contacts, deals, and customer service tickets.

Resource Name	Write Disposition	Description
companies	replace	Information about organizations
contacts	replace	Visitors, potential customers, leads
deals	replace	Deal records, deal tracking
products	replace	Pricing information of a product
quotes	replace	Price proposals that salespeople can create and send to their contacts
tickets	replace	Request for help from customers or users

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