Running

When running the pipeline in production, you may consider a few additions to your script. We'll use the script below as a starting point.

import dlt
from chess import chess

if __name__ == "__main__" :
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(pipeline_name="chess_pipeline", destination='duckdb', dataset_name="games_data")
    # get data for a few famous players
    data = chess(['magnuscarlsen','vincentkeymer', 'dommarajugukesh', 'rpragchess'], start_month="2022/11", end_month="2022/12")
    load_info = pipeline.run(data)

Inspect and save the load info and trace

The load_info contains plenty of useful information on the recently loaded data. It contains the pipeline and dataset name, the destination information (without secrets) and list of loaded packages. Package information contains its state (COMPLETED/PROCESSED) and list of all jobs with their statuses, file sizes, types and in case of failed jobs-the error messages from the destination.

    # see when load was started
    print(load_info.started_at)
    # print the information on the first load package and all jobs inside
    print(load_info.load_packages[0])
    # print the information on the first completed job in first load package
    print(load_info.load_packages[0].jobs["completed_jobs"][0])

load_info may also be loaded into the destinations as below:

    # we reuse the pipeline instance below and load to the same dataset as data
    pipeline.run([load_info], table_name="_load_info")

You can also get the runtime trace from the pipeline. It contains timing information on extract, normalize and load steps and also all the config and secret values with full information from where they were obtained. You can display and load trace info as shown below. Use your code editor to explore trace object further. The normalize step information contains the counts of rows per table of data that was normalized and then loaded.

    # print human friendly trace information
    print(pipeline.last_trace)
    # save trace to destination, sensitive data will be removed
    pipeline.run([pipeline.last_trace], table_name="_trace")

You can also access the last extract, normalize and load infos directly:

    # print human friendly extract information
    print(pipeline.last_trace.last_extract_info)
    # print human friendly normalization information
    print(pipeline.last_trace.last_normalize_info)
    # access row counts dictionary of normalize info
    print(pipeline.last_trace.last_normalize_info.row_counts)
    # print human friendly load information
    print(pipeline.last_trace.last_load_info)

Please note that you can inspect the pipeline using command line.

Inspect, save and alert on schema changes

In the package information you can also see the list of all tables and columns created at the destination during loading of that package. The code below displays all tables and schemas. Note that those objects are Typed Dictionaries, use your code editor to explore.

    # print all the new tables/columns in
    for package in load_info.load_packages:
        for table_name, table in package.schema_update.items():
            print(f"Table {table_name}: {table.get('description')}")
            for column_name, column in table["columns"].items():
                print(f"\tcolumn {column_name}: {column['data_type']}")

You can save only the new tables and column schemas to the destination. Note that the code above that saves load_info saves this data as well.

    # save just the new tables
    table_updates = [p.asdict()["tables"] for p in load_info.load_packages]
    pipeline.run(table_updates, table_name="_new_tables")

Data left behind

By default dlt leaves the loaded packages intact so they may be fully queried and inspected after load. This behavior may be changed so the successfully completed jobs are deleted from the loaded package. In that case, for a correctly behaving pipeline, only minimum amount of data will be left behind. In config.toml:

load.delete_completed_jobs=true

Using slack to send messages

dlt provides basic support for sending slack messages. You can configure Slack incoming hook via secrets.toml or environment variables. Please note that Slack incoming hook is considered a secret and will be immediately blocked when pushed to github repository. In secrets.toml:

[runtime]
slack_incoming_hook="https://hooks.slack.com/services/T04DHMAF13Q/B04E7B1MQ1H/TDHEI123WUEE"

or

RUNTIME__SLACK_INCOMING_HOOK="https://hooks.slack.com/services/T04DHMAF13Q/B04E7B1MQ1H/TDHEI123WUEE"

Then the configured hook is available via pipeline object, we also provide convenience method to send Slack messages:

from dlt.common.runtime.slack import send_slack_message

send_slack_message(pipeline.runtime_config.slack_incoming_hook, message)

Enable Sentry tracing

You can enable exception and runtime tracing via Sentry

Set the log level and format

You can set log level and switch logging to json format

[runtime]
log_level="INFO"
log_format="JSON"

log_level accepts the Python standard logging level names.

• The default log level is WARNING.
• INFO log level is useful when diagnosing problems in production.
• CRITICAL will disable logging
• DEBUG should not be used in production.

log_format accepts:

• json to get the log in json format
• Python standard log format specifier

As with any other configuration, you can use environment variables instead of the toml file.

• RUNTIME__LOG_LEVEL to set the log level
• LOG_FORMAT to set the log format

dlt logs to a logger named dlt. Note: redirecting dlt log to other logs is not yet supported.

Handle exceptions, failed jobs and retry the pipeline

When any of the steps of the pipeline fails, an exception of type PipelineStepFailed is raised. Such exception contains the pipeline step name, the pipeline object itself and the step info ie LoadInfo. It provides the general information where the problem happened. In most of the cases, you can and should obtain the causing exception using the standard Python exception chaining (__context__).

There are two different types of exceptions in __context__:

1. terminal exceptions are exceptions that should not be re-tried because the error situation will never recover without an intervention. Examples are: missing config and secret values, most of the 40x http errors, and several database errors (ie. missing relations like tables). Each of destinations has its own set of terminal exceptions that dlt tries to preserve.
2. transient exceptions are exceptions that may be retried.

Code below tells one exception type from another. Note that we provide retry strategy helpers that does that for you.

from dlt.common.exceptions import TerminalException

def check(ex: Exception):
    if isinstance(ex, TerminalException) or (ex.__context__ is not None and isinstance(ex.__context__, TerminalException)):
        return False
    return True

Failed jobs

If any job in the package fail terminally it will be moved to failed_jobs folder and assigned such status. By default no exception is raised and other jobs will be processed and completed. You may inspect if the failed jobs are present by checking the load info as follows:

# returns True if there are failed jobs in any of the load packages
print(load_info.has_failed_jobs)
# raises terminal exception if there are any failed jobs
load_info.raise_on_failed_jobs()

You may also abort the load package with LoadClientJobFailed (terminal exception) on a first failed job. Such package is immediately moved to completed but its load id is not added to the _dlt_loads table. All the jobs that were running in parallel are completed before raising. The dlt state, if present, will not be visible to dlt. Here's example config.toml to enable this option:

# you should really load just one job at a time to get the deterministic behavior
load.workers=1
# I hope you know what you are doing by setting this to true
load.raise_on_failed_jobs=true

What run does inside

Before adding retry to pipeline steps, note how run method actually works:

1. The run method will first use sync_destination method to synchronize pipeline state and schemas with the destination. Obviously at this point connection to the destination is established (which may fail and be retried)
2. Next it will make sure that data from the previous runs is fully processed. If not, run method normalizes, loads pending data items and exits
3. If there was no pending data, new data from data argument is extracted, normalized and loaded.

Retry helpers and tenacity

By default dlt does not retry any of the pipeline steps. This is left to the included helpers and the tenacity library. Snippet below will retry the load stage with the retry_load strategy and defined back-off or re-raise exception for any other steps (extract, normalize) and for terminal exceptions.

from tenacity import stop_after_attempt, retry_if_exception, Retrying, retry
from dlt.common.runtime.slack import send_slack_message
from dlt.pipeline.helpers import retry_load

if __name__ == "__main__" :
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(pipeline_name="chess_pipeline", destination='duckdb', dataset_name="games_data")
    # get data for a few famous players
    data = chess(['magnuscarlsen', 'rpragchess'], start_month="2022/11", end_month="2022/12")
    try:

        for attempt in Retrying(stop=stop_after_attempt(5), wait=wait_exponential(multiplier=1.5, min=4, max=10), retry=retry_if_exception(retry_load(())), reraise=True):
            with attempt:
                load_info = p.run(data)
                send_slack_message(pipeline.runtime_config.slack_incoming_hook, "HOORAY 😄")
    except Exception:
        # we get here after all the retries
        send_slack_message(pipeline.runtime_config.slack_incoming_hook, "BOOO 🤯")
        raise

You can also use tenacity to decorate functions. This example additionally retries on extract:

if __name__ == "__main__" :
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(pipeline_name="chess_pipeline", destination='duckdb', dataset_name="games_data")

    @retry(stop=stop_after_attempt(5), wait=wait_exponential(multiplier=1.5, min=4, max=10), retry=retry_if_exception(retry_load(("extract", "load"))), reraise=True)
    def load():
        data = chess(['magnuscarlsen','vincentkeymer', 'dommarajugukesh', 'rpragchess'], start_month="2022/11", end_month="2022/12")
        return pipeline.run(data)

    load_info = load()