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Loading Jira Data to Google Cloud Storage with Python's dlt Library

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The dlt library provides a method to bridge Jira and Google Cloud Storage, making it possible to efficiently manage, track, and release software using Jira's agile project management tools, while storing and organizing data on Google's robust cloud platform. The dlt library facilitates the transfer of data from Jira to Google Cloud Storage in a variety of formats including JSONL, Parquet, or CSV, enabling the creation of versatile datalakes. For more information about Jira, visit https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira.

dlt Key Features​

  • Pipeline Metadata: dlt pipelines leverage metadata to provide governance capabilities. This metadata includes load IDs, which consist of a timestamp and pipeline name. Load IDs enable incremental transformations and data vaulting by tracking data loads and facilitating data lineage and traceability. Read more about lineage.
  • Schema Enforcement and Curation: dlt empowers users to enforce and curate schemas, ensuring data consistency and quality. By adhering to predefined schemas, pipelines maintain data integrity and facilitate standardized data handling practices. Read more: Adjust a schema docs.
  • Schema Evolution: dlt enables proactive governance by alerting users to schema changes. When modifications occur in the source data’s schema, dlt notifies stakeholders, allowing them to take necessary actions.
  • Scaling and Finetuning: dlt offers several mechanisms and configuration options to scale up and finetune pipelines. This includes running extraction, normalization, and load in parallel, writing sources and resources that are run in parallel via thread pools and async execution, and finetuning the memory buffers, intermediary file sizes, and compression options. Read more about performance.
  • Community Support: dlt is a constantly growing library that supports many features and use cases needed by the community. Join our Slack to find recent releases or discuss what you can build with dlt.

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 Google Cloud Storage:

pip install "dlt[filesystem]"

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 Jira to Google Cloud Storage. You can run the following commands to create a starting point for loading data from Jira to Google Cloud Storage:

# create a new directory
mkdir jira_pipeline
cd jira_pipeline
# initialize a new pipeline with your source and destination
dlt init jira filesystem
# 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[filesystem]>=0.3.25

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

jira_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── jira/                   # folder with source specific files
│   └── ...
├── jira_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.jira]
subdomain = "subdomain" # please set me up!
email = "email" # please set me up!
api_token = "api_token" # please set me up!

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

[destination.filesystem.credentials]
aws_access_key_id = "aws_access_key_id" # please set me up!
aws_secret_access_key = "aws_secret_access_key" # please set me up!

2.1. Adjust the generated code to your usecase​

Further help setting up your source and destinations
  • Read more about setting up the Jira source in our docs.
  • Read more about setting up the Google Cloud Storage destination in our docs.

The default filesystem destination is configured to connect to AWS S3. To load to Google Cloud Storage, update the [destination.filesystem.credentials] section in your secrets.toml.

[destination.filesystem.credentials]
client_email="Please set me up!"
private_key="Please set me up!"
project_id="Please set me up!"

By default, the filesystem destination will store your files as JSONL. You can tell your pipeline to choose a different format with the loader_file_format property that you can set directly on the pipeline or via your config.toml. Available values are jsonl, parquet and csv:

[pipeline] # in ./dlt/config.toml
loader_file_format="parquet"

3. Running your pipeline for the first time​

The dlt cli has also created a main pipeline script for you at jira_pipeline.py, as well as a folder jira 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, Optional

import dlt
from jira import jira, jira_search


def load(endpoints: Optional[List[str]] = None) -> None:
    """
    Load data from specified Jira endpoints into a dataset.

    Args:
        endpoints: A list of Jira endpoints. If not provided, defaults to all resources.
    """
    if not endpoints:
        endpoints = list(jira().resources.keys())

    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="jira_pipeline", destination='filesystem', dataset_name="jira"
    )

    load_info = pipeline.run(jira().with_resources(*endpoints))

    print(f"Load Information: {load_info}")


def load_query_data(queries: List[str]) -> None:
    """
    Load issues from specified Jira queries into a dataset.

    Args:
        queries: A list of JQL queries.
    """
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="jira_search_pipeline",
        destination='filesystem',
        dataset_name="jira_search",
    )

    load_info = pipeline.run(jira_search().issues(jql_queries=queries))

    print(f"Load Information: {load_info}")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Add your desired endpoints to the list 'endpoints'
    load(endpoints=None)

    queries = [
        "created >= -30d order by created DESC",
        'project = KAN AND status = "In Progress" order by created DESC',
    ]

    load_query_data(queries=queries)

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

python jira_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result​

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

dlt pipeline jira_pipeline info

You can also use streamlit to inspect the contents of your Google Cloud Storage destination for this:

# install streamlit
pip install streamlit
# run the streamlit app for your pipeline with the dlt cli:
dlt pipeline jira_pipeline 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: Automate your pipeline deployment using GitHub Actions. Follow the guide here.
  • Deploy with Airflow: Use Google Composer or any Airflow instance to manage your pipeline. Learn more here.
  • Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Leverage serverless functions on Google Cloud to deploy your pipeline. Details can be found here.
  • Explore other deployment options: Discover various other methods to deploy your pipeline here.

The running in production section will teach you about:​

  • How to Monitor your pipeline: Learn how to effectively monitor your dlt pipeline in production with various tools and techniques. How to Monitor your pipeline
  • Set up alerts: Ensure you are promptly informed of any issues in your dlt pipeline by setting up alerts. Set up alerts
  • Set up tracing: Implement tracing to gain detailed insights into the performance and execution of your dlt pipeline. And set up tracing

Available Sources and Resources​

For this verified source the following sources and resources are available

Source jira​

The Jira source provides data on project management tasks, including details on issues, users, workflows, and projects.

Resource NameWrite DispositionDescription
issuesreplaceIndividual pieces of work to be completed. Contains various fields such as assignee, comments, created time, reporter, status, summary, updated time, etc.
projectsreplaceA collection of tasks that need to be completed to achieve a certain outcome. Contains fields such as avatar URL, description, ID, key, lead, name, etc.
usersreplaceAdministrator of a given project. Contains fields such as account ID, account type, avatar URL, display name, email address, etc.
workflowsreplaceThe key aspect of managing and tracking the progress of issues or tasks within a project. Contains fields such as created time, description, ID, updated time, etc.

Additional pipeline guides​

This demo works on codespaces. Codespaces is a development environment available for free to anyone with a Github account. You'll be asked to fork the demo repository and from there the README guides you with further steps.
The demo uses the Continue VSCode extension.

Off to codespaces!

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