Freshservice Python API Docs | dltHub

Build a Freshservice-to-database pipeline in Python using dlt with automatic cursor support.

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Freshservice is a cloud‑based IT service management (ITSM) platform that provides a REST API for managing tickets, users, assets, and other service desk resources. The REST API base URL is https://{domain}.freshservice.com/api/v2 and All requests require HTTP Basic authentication with an API key..

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading Freshservice data in under 10 minutes.


What data can I load from Freshservice?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Freshservice:

ResourceEndpointMethodData selectorDescription
ticketsticketsGETticketsRetrieve a list of tickets
usersusersGETusersRetrieve a list of users
assetsassetsGETassetsRetrieve a list of assets
departmentsdepartmentsGETdepartmentsRetrieve a list of departments
agentsagentsGETagentsRetrieve a list of agents

How do I authenticate with the Freshservice API?

Authentication uses an API key supplied as the username in HTTP Basic authentication; the password can be any placeholder (e.g., X). The Authorization header is "Basic <base64(api_key:X)>".

1. Get your credentials

  1. Log in to your Freshservice account.
  2. Click your profile avatar at the top right and select Profile Settings.
  3. In the API section, click Generate New API Key (or copy the existing key).
  4. Copy the generated key; it will be used as the username in HTTP Basic authentication.
  5. Store the key securely (e.g., in secrets.toml).

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

[sources.freshservice_source] api_key = "your_api_key_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.


How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the Freshservice API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

python freshservice_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

Pipeline freshservice_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds 1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset freshservice_data The duckdb destination used duckdb:/freshservice.duckdb location to store data Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

dlt pipeline freshservice_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.


Python pipeline example

This example loads tickets and users from the Freshservice API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

import dlt from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources @dlt.source def freshservice_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value): config: RESTAPIConfig = { "client": { "base_url": "https://{domain}.freshservice.com/api/v2", "auth": { "type": "http_basic", "api_key": api_key, }, }, "resources": [ {"name": "tickets", "endpoint": {"path": "tickets", "data_selector": "tickets"}}, {"name": "users", "endpoint": {"path": "users", "data_selector": "users"}} ], } yield from rest_api_resources(config) def get_data() -> None: pipeline = dlt.pipeline( pipeline_name="freshservice_pipeline", destination="duckdb", dataset_name="freshservice_data", ) load_info = pipeline.run(freshservice_source()) print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.


How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("freshservice_pipeline").dataset() sessions_df = data.tickets.df() print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

SELECT * FROM freshservice_data.tickets LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("freshservice_pipeline").dataset() data.tickets.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.


What destinations can I load Freshservice data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

DestinationExample value
DuckDB (local, default)"duckdb"
PostgreSQL"postgres"
BigQuery"bigquery"
Snowflake"snowflake"
Redshift"redshift"
Databricks"databricks"
Filesystem (S3, GCS, Azure)"filesystem"

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.


Troubleshooting

Authentication Errors

  • 401 Unauthorized – occurs when the API key is missing or incorrect. Verify that the api_key is correct and included as the username in HTTP Basic authentication.
  • 403 Forbidden – indicates the key does not have permission for the requested resource.

Rate Limiting

  • Freshservice returns 429 Too Many Requests when the per‑minute limit is exceeded. The response includes Retry-After header indicating how many seconds to wait before retrying.
  • Headers X‑Ratelimit‑Total, X‑Ratelimit‑Remaining, and X‑Ratelimit‑Used‑CurrentRequest provide quota information.

Pagination

  • Use page and per_page query parameters. Default per_page is 30, maximum 100.
  • The response includes a link header with the URL for the next page when more results are available.
  • Example: GET https://domain.freshservice.com/api/v2/tickets?page=2&per_page=50.

Ensure that the API key is valid to avoid 401 Unauthorized errors. Also, verify endpoint paths and parameters to avoid 404 Not Found errors.


Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

  • data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
  • dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.
dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

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