Load Mendeley Data data in Python using dltHub

Build a Mendeley Data-to-database or-dataframe pipeline in Python using dlt with automatic Cursor support.

In this guide, we'll set up a complete Mendeley Data 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
@dlt.source
def mendeley_data_migrations_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.data.mendeley.com/v1/",
            "auth": {
                "type": "bearer",
                "token": access_token,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            users, files, events
            ],
    }
    [...]
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    # Connect to destination
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name='mendeley_data_migrations_pipeline',
        destination='duckdb',
        dataset_name='mendeley_data_migrations_data', 
    )
    # Load the data
    load_info = pipeline.run(mendeley_data_migrations_source())
    print(load_info)

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 mendeley_data_migrations’s API and loads it into Iceberg, DataFrames, files, or a database of your choice. Here are some of the endpoints you can load:

Users: Manage user information and access.
Files: Upload, download, and manage files within datasets.
Events: Handle events related to datasets and files.
Projects: Manage projects associated with datasets.
Licences: Handle licensing for datasets.
Datasets: Manage datasets, including creation and updates.
Articles: Manage academic articles within the system.
Workspaces: Manage collaborative environments for datasets.

You will then debug the Mendeley Data 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!

⚙️ Set up dlt Workspace

Install dlt with duckdb support:
```
pip install "dlt[workspace]"
```
Initialize a dlt pipeline with Mendeley Data support.
```
dlt init dlthub:mendeley_data_migrations duckdb
```
The init command will setup the necessary files and folders for the next step.

🤠 Start LLM-assisted coding

Here’s a prompt to get you started:

Prompt
Please generate a REST API Source for Mendeley Data API, as specified in @mendeley_data_migrations-docs.yaml 
Start with endpoints users and  and skip incremental loading for now. 
Place the code in mendeley_data_migrations_pipeline.py and name the pipeline mendeley_data_migrations_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 mendeley_data_migrations_pipeline.py and await further instructions.

🔒 Set up credentials

Authorization requires OAuth2 with support for access, refresh, and identity tokens. A connected app in the API must be set up to enable authentication and authorization processes.

To get the appropriate API keys, please visit the original source at https://www.mendeley.com/. If you want to protect your environment secrets in a production environment, look into setting up credentials with dlt.

🏃‍♀️ Run the pipeline in the Python terminal in Cursor


python mendeley_data_migrations_pipeline.py

If your pipeline runs correctly, you’ll see something like the following:


Pipeline mendeley_data_migrations load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset mendeley_data_migrations_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/mendeley_data_migrations.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 mendeley_data_migrations_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("mendeley_data_migrations_pipeline").dataset()
# get ser table as Pandas frame
data.ser.df().head()
```

Running into errors?

Mendeley Data APIs will cease accepting traffic from api.mendeley.com after 1st October 2024. Authorization via Mendeley OAuth will no longer be supported after this date. Ensure to handle dataset licensing correctly as datasets must not have been published before. Note that files added to datasets do not sync with original source files.

Extra resources:

Learn more with our 1h LLM-assisted coding course!