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Loading Data from Notion to CockroachDB in Python with dlt

tip

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

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This documentation provides a step-by-step guide on loading data from Notion to CockroachDB using the open-source Python library dlt. Notion is an all-in-one workspace where you can capture thoughts, manage projects, and even run entire companies in a highly customizable manner. CockroachDB offers a simple, reliable SQL API that is distributed, cloud-native, Kubernetes compatible, and free up to 5GB and 1vCPU. By leveraging dlt, you can efficiently transfer and manage data between Notion and CockroachDB, ensuring data integrity and consistency. This guide will walk you through the setup and execution of this data pipeline.

dlt Key Features​

  • Automated maintenance: With schema inference, evolution, and alerts, dlt simplifies maintenance with short declarative code. Learn more here.
  • Run it where Python runs: dlt can be executed on Airflow, serverless functions, notebooks, and scales on both micro and large infrastructure. More details here.
  • User-friendly interface: The declarative interface of dlt removes knowledge obstacles for beginners while empowering senior professionals. Discover more here.
  • Scalable data extraction: dlt offers scalable data extraction by leveraging iterators, chunking, and parallelization techniques. Read about it here.
  • Governance support: dlt pipelines provide robust governance through pipeline metadata, schema enforcement, and schema change alerts. Explore more here.

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 CockroachDB:

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 Notion to CockroachDB. You can run the following commands to create a starting point for loading data from Notion to CockroachDB:

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

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

notion_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── notion/                   # folder with source specific files
│   └── ...
├── notion_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.notion]
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 Notion source in our docs.
  • Read more about setting up the CockroachDB 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 notion_pipeline.py, as well as a folder notion 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 notion import notion_databases


def load_databases() -> None:
    """Loads all databases from a Notion workspace which have been shared with
    an integration.
    """
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="notion",
        destination='postgres',
        dataset_name="notion_data",
    )

    data = notion_databases()

    info = pipeline.run(data)
    print(info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_databases()

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

python notion_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result​

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

dlt pipeline notion info

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

# install streamlit
pip install streamlit
# run the streamlit app for your pipeline with the dlt cli:
dlt pipeline notion 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: Use Github Actions to automate your deployment process. Learn more here.
  • Deploy with Airflow: Utilize Airflow and Google Composer for managing your pipeline deployments. Details can be found here.
  • Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Implement serverless deployment using Google Cloud Functions. Follow the guide here.
  • Explore other deployment options: Discover various other methods to deploy your pipeline by visiting this page.

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 everything runs smoothly. How to Monitor your pipeline
  • Set up alerts: Set up alerts to get notified about any issues or important events in your dlt pipeline. Set up alerts
  • Set up tracing: Implement tracing to track the performance and identify bottlenecks in your dlt pipeline. And set up tracing

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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