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Loading Data from Shopify to Neon Serverless Postgres with dlt in Python

tip

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

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This documentation provides a guide to loading data from Shopify into Neon Serverless Postgres using the open-source Python library, dlt. Shopify is a comprehensive commerce platform that enables users to start, grow, manage, and scale their businesses. Neon Serverless Postgres offers a serverless platform for the well-loved Postgres database, designed to help you build reliable and scalable applications faster. This guide will walk you through the steps required to extract data from Shopify and load it into Neon Serverless Postgres using dlt. For more details about Shopify, visit their website.

dlt Key Features​

  • Easy to get started: dlt is a Python library that is easy to use and understand. It is designed to be simple to use and easy to understand. Type pip install dlt and you are ready to go. Learn more
  • Automated maintenance: With schema inference and evolution, and alerts, maintenance becomes simple. Learn more
  • Scalability: dlt offers scalable data extraction by leveraging iterators, chunking, and parallelization techniques. Learn more
  • Governance support: dlt pipelines offer robust governance support through pipeline metadata, schema enforcement, and schema change alerts. Learn more
  • Declarative interface: User-friendly, declarative interface that removes knowledge obstacles for beginners while empowering senior professionals. Learn more

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 Neon Serverless Postgres:

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 Shopify to Neon Serverless Postgres. You can run the following commands to create a starting point for loading data from Shopify to Neon Serverless Postgres:

# create a new directory
mkdir shopify_dlt_pipeline
cd shopify_dlt_pipeline
# initialize a new pipeline with your source and destination
dlt init shopify_dlt 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]>=0.3.8

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

shopify_dlt_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── shopify_dlt/                   # folder with source specific files
│   └── ...
├── shopify_dlt_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

[sources.shopify_dlt]
shop_url = "shop_url" # please set me up!
organization_id = "organization_id" # please set me up!

generated secrets.toml​

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

[sources.shopify_dlt]
private_app_password = "private_app_password" # please set me up!
access_token = "access_token" # 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 Shopify source in our docs.
  • Read more about setting up the Neon Serverless Postgres 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 shopify_dlt_pipeline.py, as well as a folder shopify_dlt 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:


"""Pipeline to load shopify data into BigQuery.
"""

import dlt
from dlt.common import pendulum
from typing import List, Tuple
from shopify_dlt import shopify_source, TAnyDateTime, shopify_partner_query


def load_all_resources(resources: List[str], start_date: TAnyDateTime) -> None:
    """Execute a pipeline that will load the given Shopify resources incrementally beginning at the given start date.
    Subsequent runs will load only items updated since the previous run.
    """

    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="shopify", destination='postgres', dataset_name="shopify_data"
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(
        shopify_source(start_date=start_date).with_resources(*resources),
    )
    print(load_info)


def incremental_load_with_backloading() -> None:
    """Load past orders from Shopify in chunks of 1 week each using the start_date and end_date parameters.
    This can useful to reduce the potiential failure window when loading large amounts of historic data.
    Chunks and incremental load can also be run in parallel to speed up the initial load.
    """

    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="shopify", destination='postgres', dataset_name="shopify_data"
    )

    # Load all orders from 2023-01-01 to now
    min_start_date = current_start_date = pendulum.datetime(2023, 1, 1)
    max_end_date = pendulum.now()

    # Create a list of time ranges of 1 week each, we'll use this to load the data in chunks
    ranges: List[Tuple[pendulum.DateTime, pendulum.DateTime]] = []
    while current_start_date < max_end_date:
        end_date = min(current_start_date.add(weeks=1), max_end_date)
        ranges.append((current_start_date, end_date))
        current_start_date = end_date

    # Run the pipeline for each time range created above
    for start_date, end_date in ranges:
        print(f"Load orders between {start_date} and {end_date}")
        # Create the source with start and end date set according to the current time range to filter
        # created_at_min lets us set a cutoff to exclude orders created before the initial date of (2023-01-01)
        # even if they were updated after that date
        data = shopify_source(
            start_date=start_date, end_date=end_date, created_at_min=min_start_date
        ).with_resources("orders")

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

    # Continue loading new data incrementally starting at the end of the last range
    # created_at_min still filters out items created before 2023-01-01
    load_info = pipeline.run(
        shopify_source(
            start_date=max_end_date, created_at_min=min_start_date
        ).with_resources("orders")
    )
    print(load_info)


def load_partner_api_transactions() -> None:
    """Load transactions from the Shopify Partner API.
    The partner API uses GraphQL and this example loads all transactions from the beginning paginated.

    The `shopify_partner_query` resource can be used to run custom GraphQL queries to load paginated data.
    """

    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="shopify_partner",
        destination='postgres',
        dataset_name="shopify_partner_data",
    )

    # Construct query to load transactions 100 per page, the `$after` variable is used to paginate
    query = """query Transactions($after: String, first: 100) {
        transactions(after: $after) {
            edges {
                cursor
                node {
                    id
                }
            }
        }
    }
    """

    # Configure the resource with the query and json paths to extract the data and pagination cursor
    resource = shopify_partner_query(
        query,
        # JSON path pointing to the data item in the results
        data_items_path="data.transactions.edges[*].node",
        # JSON path pointing to the highest page cursor in the results
        pagination_cursor_path="data.transactions.edges[-1].cursor",
        # The variable name used for pagination
        pagination_variable_name="after",
    )

    load_info = pipeline.run(resource)
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Add your desired resources to the list...
    resources = ["products", "orders", "customers"]
    load_all_resources(resources, start_date="2000-01-01")

    # incremental_load_with_backloading()

    # load_partner_api_transactions()

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

python shopify_dlt_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result​

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

dlt pipeline shopify info

You can also use streamlit to inspect the contents of your Neon Serverless Postgres destination for this:

# install streamlit
pip install streamlit
# run the streamlit app for your pipeline with the dlt cli:
dlt pipeline shopify 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 a pipeline using GitHub Actions for CI/CD. Follow the guide here.
  • Deploy with Airflow and Google Composer: Discover how to deploy a pipeline with Airflow and Google Composer by following this detailed guide.
  • Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Explore the steps to deploy a pipeline using Google Cloud Functions by visiting this resource.
  • More Deployment Options: Find additional methods and guides for deploying 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 to ensure smooth and efficient data processing. Read more
  • Set up alerts: Set up alerts to notify you of any issues or important events in your dlt pipeline, ensuring you can respond promptly. Read more
  • And set up tracing: Implement tracing to get detailed insights into the execution of your dlt pipeline, helping you identify and troubleshoot issues. Read more

Available Sources and Resources​

For this verified source the following sources and resources are available

Source shopify​

"Shopify is an e-commerce platform offering data on customer accounts, transactions, and product listings."

Resource NameWrite DispositionDescription
customersmergeIndividuals or entities who have created accounts on a Shopify-powered online store
ordersmergeTransactions made by customers on an online store
productsmergeThe individual items or goods that are available for sale

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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