Load Magpie Travel data in Python using dltHub
Build a Magpie Travel-to-database or-dataframe pipeline in Python using dlt with automatic Cursor support.
In this guide, we'll set up a complete Magpie Travel data pipeline from API credentials to your first data load in just 10 minutes. You'll end up with a fully declarative Python pipeline based on dlt's REST API connector, like in the partial example code below:
Example code
Why use dltHub Workspace with LLM Context to generate Python pipelines?
- Accelerate pipeline development with AI-native context
- Debug pipelines, validate schemas and data with the integrated Pipeline Dashboard
- Build Python notebooks for end users of your data
- Low maintenance thanks to Schema evolution with type inference, resilience and self documenting REST API connectors. A shallow learning curve makes the pipeline easy to extend by any team member
- dlt is the tool of choice for Pythonic Iceberg Lakehouses, bringing mature data loading to pythonic Iceberg with or without catalogs
What you’ll do
We’ll show you how to generate a readable and easily maintainable Python script that fetches data from magpie_travel’s API and loads it into Iceberg, DataFrames, files, or a database of your choice. Here are some of the endpoints you can load:
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Products Endpoint: Endpoint for accessing product information, which can be filtered by various parameters.
/api/products: Retrieves all products./api/products?account=Ophorus: Retrieves products associated with the specified account./api/products?limit=50: Retrieves a limited number of products, in this case, 50./api/products?location=San%20Francisco: Retrieves products located in San Francisco./api/products?page=2: Retrieves a specific page of products for pagination.
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API Key Endpoint: Endpoint for API authentication.
/api?api_key=: Used to authenticate requests with an API key.
You will then debug the Magpie Travel pipeline using our Pipeline Dashboard tool to ensure it is copying the data correctly, before building a Notebook to explore your data and build reports.
Setup & steps to follow
💡Before getting started, let's make sure Cursor is set up correctly:
- We suggest using a model like Claude 3.7 Sonnet or better
- Index the REST API Source tutorial: https://dlthub.com/docs/dlt-ecosystem/verified-sources/rest_api/ and add it to context as @dlt rest api
- Read our full steps on setting up Cursor
Now you're ready to get started!
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⚙️ Set up
dltWorkspaceInstall dlt with duckdb support:
pip install "dlt[workspace]"Initialize a dlt pipeline with Magpie Travel support.
dlt init dlthub:magpie_travel duckdbThe
initcommand will setup the necessary files and folders for the next step. -
🤠 Start LLM-assisted coding
Here’s a prompt to get you started:
PromptPlease generate a REST API Source for Magpie Travel API, as specified in @magpie_travel-docs.yaml Start with endpoints products and products` and skip incremental loading for now. Place the code in magpie_travel_pipeline.py and name the pipeline magpie_travel_pipeline. If the file exists, use it as a starting point. Do not add or modify any other files. Use @dlt rest api as a tutorial. After adding the endpoints, allow the user to run the pipeline with python magpie_travel_pipeline.py and await further instructions. -
🔒 Set up credentials
You need to provide the
X-Api-Keyheader to authenticate, which you can obtain as a key (e.g.,58c068808359e091c310054e43c3c27a), and apply it in your request header asX-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEYor use theapi_keyquery parameter in the URL (e.g.,GET /api?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY).To get the appropriate API keys, please visit the original source at https://magpie-travel.github.io/api-docs/. If you want to protect your environment secrets in a production environment, look into setting up credentials with dlt.
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🏃♀️ Run the pipeline in the Python terminal in Cursor
python magpie_travel_pipeline.pyIf your pipeline runs correctly, you’ll see something like the following:
Pipeline magpie_travel load step completed in 0.26 seconds 1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset magpie_travel_data The duckdb destination used duckdb:/magpie_travel.duckdb location to store data Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs -
📈 Debug your pipeline and data with the Pipeline Dashboard
Now that you have a running pipeline, you need to make sure it’s correct, so you do not introduce silent failures like misconfigured pagination or incremental loading errors. By launching the dlt Workspace Pipeline Dashboard, you can see various information about the pipeline to enable you to test it. Here you can see:
- Pipeline overview: State, load metrics
- Data’s schema: tables, columns, types, hints
- You can query the data itself
dlt pipeline magpie_travel_pipeline show -
🐍 Build a Notebook with data explorations and reports
With the pipeline and data partially validated, you can continue with custom data explorations and reports. To get started, paste the snippet below into a new marimo Notebook and ask your LLM to go from there. Jupyter Notebooks and regular Python scripts are supported as well.
import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("magpie_travel_pipeline").dataset() # get "products" table as Pandas frame data."products".df().head()