Skip to main content

Python Data Transfer from notion to azure Cloud Storage with dlt

Need help deploying these pipelines, or figuring out how to run them in your data stack?

Join our Slack community or book a call with our support engineer Violetta.

This page provides technical documentation for using the open-source Python library, dlt, to load data from Notion to Azure Cloud Storage. Notion is a versatile platform that allows for thought capture, project management, and even running an entire company. Azure Cloud Storage, on the other hand, is a filesystem service provided by Microsoft Azure, ideal for creating datalakes and supporting data upload in JSONL, Parquet, or CSV formats. By leveraging dlt, you can efficiently transfer data from Notion to Azure Cloud Storage. For more information about Notion, visit Notion Help Guides.

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. Schemas define the structure of normalized data and guide the processing and loading of data. Read more: Adjust a schema docs.
  • Schema Change Alerts: 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, and finetuning the memory buffers, intermediary file sizes, and compression options. Read more about performance.
  • Filesystem & Buckets: Filesystem destination stores data in remote file systems and bucket storages like S3, Google Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. It uses fsspec to abstract file operations. Its primary role is to be used as a staging for other destinations, but you can also quickly build a data lake with it. Read more: Filesystem destination.

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

# create a new directory
mkdir notion_pipeline
cd notion_pipeline
# initialize a new pipeline with your source and destination
dlt init notion 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:

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.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 Notion source in our docs.
  • Read more about setting up the Azure Cloud Storage destination in our docs.

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

[destination.filesystem.credentials]
azure_storage_account_name="Please set me up!"
azure_storage_account_key="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 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='filesystem',
        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 Azure Cloud Storage 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: Learn how to deploy your dlt pipeline using GitHub Actions for continuous integration and deployment. Read more
  • Deploy with Airflow: Discover the steps to deploy your dlt pipeline with Airflow and Google Composer. Read more
  • Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Find out how to deploy your dlt pipeline using Google Cloud Functions. Read more
  • Other Deployment Methods: Explore additional methods for deploying your dlt pipeline, including various cloud and local options. Read more

The running in production section will teach you about:​

  • How to Monitor your pipeline: Learn how to keep track of your pipeline's performance and health by following the guide on How to Monitor your pipeline.
  • Set up alerts: Ensure you're immediately notified of any issues or important events in your pipeline by setting up alerts. Follow the instructions on Set up alerts.
  • Set up tracing: Gain detailed insights into the execution of your pipeline by setting up tracing. Learn how to do this by visiting 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!

DHelp

Ask a question

Welcome to "Codex Central", your next-gen help center, driven by OpenAI's GPT-4 model. It's more than just a forum or a FAQ hub – it's a dynamic knowledge base where coders can find AI-assisted solutions to their pressing problems. With GPT-4's powerful comprehension and predictive abilities, Codex Central provides instantaneous issue resolution, insightful debugging, and personalized guidance. Get your code running smoothly with the unparalleled support at Codex Central - coding help reimagined with AI prowess.