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Loading Data from Mux to The Local Filesystem with dlt in Python

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This page provides technical documentation on loading data from Mux to The Local Filesystem using the open-source Python library dlt. Mux addresses the complex challenges software teams encounter when developing video solutions, from live-streaming platforms to on-demand video catalogs. The Local Filesystem destination allows you to store data in a local folder, making it easy to create data lakes. You can store data in various formats, including JSONL, Parquet, or CSV. This guide will help you set up and configure the data pipeline using dlt. For more information about Mux, visit their website.

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 about lineage.

  • Schema Enforcement and Curation: Ensure data consistency and quality by enforcing and curating schemas, which define the structure of normalized data and guide the processing and loading of data. Read more about adjusting a schema.

  • Scalability via Iterators, Chunking, and Parallelization: dlt offers scalable data extraction by leveraging iterators, chunking, and parallelization techniques, allowing efficient processing of large datasets. Learn more about building a pipeline.

  • Controlling In-Memory Buffers and Intermediary Files: Fine-tune memory and CPU usage by controlling the size of in-memory buffers and intermediary files during the extract and normalize stages. Read more about performance.

  • TOML vs. Environment Variables for Configuration: dlt translates standard format keys into provider-specific formats, allowing configuration through both TOML files and environment variables. Learn more about configuration providers.

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 The Local Filesystem:

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 Mux to The Local Filesystem. You can run the following commands to create a starting point for loading data from Mux to The Local Filesystem:

# create a new directory
mkdir mux_pipeline
cd mux_pipeline
# initialize a new pipeline with your source and destination
dlt init mux 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]>=0.3.5

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

mux_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── mux/                   # folder with source specific files
│   └── ...
├── mux_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.mux]
mux_api_access_token = "mux_api_access_token" # please set me up!
mux_api_secret_key = "mux_api_secret_key" # 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 Mux source in our docs.
  • Read more about setting up the The Local Filesystem destination in our docs.

The default filesystem destination is configured to connect to AWS S3. To load to a local directory, remove the [destination.filesystem.credentials] section from your secrets.toml and provide a local filepath as the bucket_url.

[destination.filesystem] # in ./dlt/secrets.toml
bucket_url="file://path/to/my/output"

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 mux_pipeline.py, as well as a folder mux 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:


import dlt
from mux import mux_source


def load_yesterday_video_views() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="mux", destination='filesystem', dataset_name="mux_data"
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(mux_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_yesterday_video_views()

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

python mux_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result​

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

dlt pipeline mux info

You can also use streamlit to inspect the contents of your The Local Filesystem destination for this:

# install streamlit
pip install streamlit
# run the streamlit app for your pipeline with the dlt cli:
dlt pipeline mux 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 use GitHub Actions for CI/CD to deploy your dlt pipelines. Follow the step-by-step guide here.
  • Deploy with Airflow and Google Composer: Use Google Composer, a managed Airflow environment, to deploy your dlt pipelines. Detailed instructions can be found here.
  • Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Explore how to deploy dlt pipelines using Google Cloud Functions for a serverless deployment approach. Check out the guide here.
  • Other Deployment Options: Discover various other methods to deploy your dlt pipelines, including different cloud and on-premises solutions. More information is available 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 to ensure smooth operation and quick identification of issues. Read more
  • Set up alerts: Set up alerts to stay informed about the status and performance of your dlt pipeline, so you can act promptly when issues arise. Read more
  • Set up tracing: Implement tracing in your dlt pipeline to gain detailed insights into its execution flow and performance metrics. Read more

Available Sources and Resources​

For this verified source the following sources and resources are available

Source mux_source​

"Mux_source" provides data on video content and viewing metrics from the Mux platform.

Resource NameWrite DispositionDescription
assets_resourcemergeFetches metadata about video assets from the Mux API's "assets" endpoint
views_resourceappendFetches data about every video view from yesterday from the Mux API

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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