Load SoundCloud Data to Azure Cloud Storage with dlt in Python

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Loading data from SoundCloud to Azure Cloud Storage can be efficiently handled using the open-source Python library dlt. SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform that allows users to upload, promote, and share audio. On the other hand, Azure Cloud Storage is a destination that stores data on Microsoft Azure, facilitating the creation of data lakes. With dlt, you can upload data in formats such as JSONL, Parquet, or CSV. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up a data pipeline to move audio data from SoundCloud to Azure Cloud Storage. For more details about SoundCloud, visit their official 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.
• Filesystem & Buckets: Supports remote file systems and bucket storages like S3, Google Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. Learn more
• Databricks Integration: Seamlessly integrates with Databricks for advanced data processing and analytics. Learn more
• Securely handle secrets: Provides mechanisms to securely manage and handle secrets within your data pipeline. Learn more
• Incremental Loading: Supports incrementally loading new data and deduplicating existing data to optimize data processing. Learn more

Getting started with your pipeline locally

OpenAPI Source Generator dlt-init-openapi

This walkthrough makes use of the dlt-init-openapi generator cli tool. You can read more about it here. The code generated by this tool uses the dlt rest_api verified source, docs for this are here.

0. Prerequisites

dlt and dlt-init-openapi requires Python 3.9 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 and dlt-init-openapi

First you need to install the dlt-init-openapi cli tool.

pip install dlt-init-openapi

The dlt-init-openapi cli is a powerful generator which you can use to turn any OpenAPI spec into a dlt source to ingest data from that api. The quality of the generator source is dependent on how well the API is designed and how accurate the OpenAPI spec you are using is. You may need to make tweaks to the generated code, you can learn more about this here.

# generate pipeline
# NOTE: add_limit adds a global limit, you can remove this later
# NOTE: you will need to select which endpoints to render, you 
# can just hit Enter and all will be rendered.
dlt-init-openapi soundcloud --url https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dlt-hub/openapi-specs/main/open_api_specs/Public/soundcloud.yaml --global-limit 2
cd soundcloud_pipeline
# install generated requirements
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>=0.4.12

You now have the following folder structure in your project:

soundcloud_pipeline/
├── .dlt/
│   ├── config.toml          # configs for your pipeline
│   └── secrets.toml         # secrets for your pipeline
├── rest_api/                # The rest api verified source
│   └── ...
├── soundcloud/                
│   └── __init__.py          # TODO: possibly tweak this file
├── soundcloud_pipeline.py        # your main pipeline script
├── requirements.txt         # dependencies for your pipeline
└── .gitignore               # ignore files for git (not required)

1.1. Tweak soundcloud/__init__.py

This file contains the generated configuration of your rest_api. You can continue with the next steps and leave it as is, but you might want to come back here and make adjustments if you need your rest_api source set up in a different way. The generated file for the soundcloud source will look like this:

Click to view full file (568 lines)

from typing import List

import dlt
from dlt.extract.source import DltResource
from rest_api import rest_api_source
from rest_api.typing import RESTAPIConfig


@dlt.source(name="soundcloud_source", max_table_nesting=2)
def soundcloud_source(
        api_key: str = dlt.secrets.value,
        base_url: str = dlt.config.value,
) -> List[DltResource]:

    # source configuration
    source_config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": base_url,
            "auth": {
                
            "type": "api_key",
            "api_key": api_key,
            "name": "Authorization",
            "location": "header"

            },
            "paginator": {
                "type":
                    "offset",
                "limit":
                    200,
                "offset_param":
                    "offset",
                "limit_param":
                    "limit",
                "total_path":
                    "",
                "maximum_offset":
                    20,
            },
        },
        "resources": 
        [
        {
            "name": "get_meactivities",
            "table_name": "activity",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/activities",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_idcomments",
            "table_name": "comment",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}/comments",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idcomments",
            "table_name": "comment",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/comments",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        # <h3>Security Advice</h3> * Using the [implicit OAuth authorization flow](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-security-topics-16#section-2.1.2) (`response_type=token`)  is **not recommended**. It can suffer from access token leakage and access token replay attacks. Use `response_type=code` instead. * Use the `state` parameter for [CSRF protection](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-security-topics-16#section-4.7). Pass a sufficient  random nonce here and verify this nonce again after retrieving the token. 
        {
            "name": "get_connect",
            "table_name": "connect",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/connect",
                "params": {
                    "client_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    "redirect_uri": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    "response_type": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    "scope": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "state": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_meconnections",
            "table_name": "connection",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/connections",
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_meconnectionsconnection_id",
            "table_name": "connection",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/connections/{connection_id}",
                "params": {
                    "connection_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idfavorites",
            "table_name": "favorite",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/favorites",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_idfavoriters",
            "table_name": "favoriter",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}/favoriters",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefollowers",
            "table_name": "follower",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/followers",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefollowersfollower_id",
            "table_name": "follower",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/followers/{follower_id}",
                "params": {
                    "follower_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        # Returns a list of users that follows (user_id).
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idfollowers",
            "table_name": "follower",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/followers",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefollowings",
            "table_name": "following",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/followings",
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefollowingsuser_id",
            "table_name": "following",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/followings/{user_id}",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        # Returns list of users that (user_id) follows.
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idfollowings",
            "table_name": "following",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/followings",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        # Returns (following_id) that is followed by (user_id).
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idfollowingsfollowing_id",
            "table_name": "following",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/followings/{following_id}",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    "following_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefavoritesids",
            "table_name": "id",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/favorites/ids",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_me",
            "table_name": "me",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me",
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_meactivitiesallown",
            "table_name": "own",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/activities/all/own",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        # Returns playlist info, playlist tracks and tracks owner info.
        {
            "name": "get_meplaylists",
            "table_name": "playlist",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/playlists",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_meplaylistsplaylist_id",
            "table_name": "playlist",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/playlists/{playlist_id}",
                "params": {
                    "playlist_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_playlists",
            "table_name": "playlist",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/playlists",
                "params": {
                    "q": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_playlistsplaylist_id",
            "table_name": "playlist",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/playlists/{playlist_id}",
                "params": {
                    "playlist_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "secret_token": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "access": "playable,preview",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idplaylists",
            "table_name": "playlist",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/playlists",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_idrelated",
            "table_name": "related",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}/related",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_playlistsplaylist_idreposters",
            "table_name": "reposter",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/playlists/{playlist_id}/reposters",
                "params": {
                    "playlist_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_idreposters",
            "table_name": "reposter",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}/reposters",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_resolve",
            "table_name": "resolve",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/resolve",
                "params": {
                    "url": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_idstreams",
            "table_name": "stream",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}/streams",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "secret_token": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_meactivitiestracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/activities/tracks",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_mefollowingstracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/followings/tracks",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_melikestracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/likes/tracks",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_metracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/tracks",
                "params": {
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_metrackstrack_id",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/me/tracks/{track_id}",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_playlistsplaylist_idtracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/playlists/{playlist_id}/tracks",
                "params": {
                    "playlist_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "secret_token": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_tracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks",
                "params": {
                    "q": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "ids": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "genres": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "tags": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "bpm": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "duration": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "created_at": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_trackstrack_id",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/tracks/{track_id}",
                "params": {
                    "track_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "secret_token": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idlikestracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/likes/tracks",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idtracks",
            "table_name": "track",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/tracks",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "access": "playable,preview",
                    # "limit": "50",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_users",
            "table_name": "user",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users",
                "params": {
                    "q": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required query parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "ids": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",
                    # "linked_partitioning": "OPTIONAL_CONFIG",

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_id",
            "table_name": "user",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter

                },
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "get_usersuser_idweb_profiles",
            "table_name": "web_profile",
            "endpoint": {
                "path": "/users/{user_id}/web-profiles",
                "params": {
                    "user_id": "FILL_ME_IN", # TODO: fill in required path parameter
                    # the parameters below can optionally be configured
                    # "limit": "50",

                },
            }
        },
        ]
    }

    return rest_api_source(source_config)

2. Configuring your source and destination credentials

info

dlt-init-openapi will try to detect which authentication mechanism (if any) is used by the API in question and add a placeholder in your secrets.toml.

• If you know your API needs authentication, but none was detected, you can learn more about adding authentication to the rest_api here.
• OAuth detection currently is not supported, but you can supply your own authentication mechanism as outlined here.

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

[runtime]
log_level="INFO"

[sources.soundcloud]
# Base URL for the API
base_url = "https://api.soundcloud.com"

generated secrets.toml

[sources.soundcloud]
# secrets for your soundcloud source
api_key = "FILL ME OUT"  # TODO: fill in your credentials

2.1. Adjust the generated code to your usecase

Further help setting up your source and destinations

At this time, the dlt-init-openapi cli tool will always create pipelines that load to a local duckdb instance. Switching to a different destination is trivial, all you need to do is change the destination parameter in soundcloud_pipeline.py to filesystem and supply the credentials as outlined in the destination doc linked below.

• Read more about setting up the rest_api 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 soundcloud_pipeline.py, as well as a folder soundcloud 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 soundcloud import soundcloud_source


if __name__ == "__main__":
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="soundcloud_pipeline",
        destination='duckdb',
        dataset_name="soundcloud_data",
        progress="log",
        export_schema_path="schemas/export"
    )
    source = soundcloud_source()
    info = pipeline.run(source)
    print(info)

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

python soundcloud_pipeline.py

4. Inspecting your load result

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

dlt pipeline soundcloud_pipeline 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 soundcloud_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: Learn how to automate your pipeline deployment using Github Actions.
• Deploy with Airflow: Follow this guide to deploy your pipeline using Airflow and Google Composer.
• Deploy with Google Cloud Functions: Discover how to deploy your pipeline using Google Cloud Functions.
• Explore other deployment options: Check out more guides on how to deploy a pipeline with various methods.

The running in production section will teach you about:

• How to Monitor your pipeline: Learn how to effectively monitor your dlt pipeline to ensure everything is running smoothly and efficiently. Check out the guide here.
• Set up alerts: Setting up alerts helps you stay informed about the status of your pipeline and quickly address any issues that arise. Find out how to set up alerts here.
• Set up tracing: Tracing allows you to track the flow of data through your pipeline, providing valuable insights and helping you debug issues. Learn how to set up tracing here.

Available Sources and Resources

For this verified source the following sources and resources are available

Source Soundcloud

Streams SoundCloud user activities, interactions, and track details.

Resource Name	Write Disposition	Description
favoriter	append	Users who have favorited a particular track
own	append	Tracks uploaded by the authenticated user
track	append	Individual audio tracks available on SoundCloud
stream	append	Stream of activities related to the authenticated user
me	append	Profile information of the authenticated user
follower	append	Users who follow the authenticated user
activity	append	Recent activities of the authenticated user
connect	append	Connection requests related to the authenticated user
connection	append	Established connections of the authenticated user
favorite	append	Tracks favorited by the authenticated user
reposter	append	Users who have reposted a particular track
resolve	append	Resolves SoundCloud URLs to API resources
id	append	Identifiers for various SoundCloud resources
user	append	Profile information of any user on SoundCloud
comment	append	Comments made on tracks
playlist	append	Playlists created by users
web_profile	append	External web profiles linked to a user's SoundCloud account
related	append	Tracks related to a particular track
following	append	Users that the authenticated user is following

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