Load Riot Games data in Python using dltHub

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

In this guide, we'll set up a complete Riot Games 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 riot_games_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://americas.api.riotgames.com/riot/account/v1/",
            "auth": {
                "type": "bearer",
                "token": accessToken,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            accounts/by-puuid/{puuid}, accounts/by-riot-id/{gameName}/{tagLine}
        ],
    }
    [...]
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def get_data() -> None:
    # Connect to destination
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name='riot_games_pipeline',
        destination='duckdb',
        dataset_name='riot_games_data', 
    )
    # Load the data
    load_info = pipeline.run(riot_games_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 riot_games’s API and loads it into Iceberg, DataFrames, files, or a database of your choice. Here are some of the endpoints you can load:

  • Riot ID Lookup: Retrieve account information by game name and tag line
  • Account by PUUID: Fetch account details using player's universal unique identifier
  • Account by Riot ID: Get account data using game name and tag line combination
  • Current Account: Retrieve authenticated user's own account information
  • Active Shards: Determine which game server shard a player is currently active on
  • Regional Data: Get region information for a specific game and player

You will then debug the Riot Games 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:

Now you're ready to get started!

  1. ⚙️ Set up dlt Workspace

    Install dlt with duckdb support:

    pip install dlt[workspace]

    Initialize a dlt pipeline with Riot Games support.

    dlt init dlthub:riot_games duckdb

    The init command will setup the necessary files and folders for the next step.

  2. 🤠 Start LLM-assisted coding

    Here’s a prompt to get you started:

    Prompt
    Please generate a REST API Source for Riot Games API, as specified in @riot_games-docs.yaml 
Start with endpoint(s) accounts/by-puuid/{puuid} and accounts/by-riot-id/{gameName}/{tagLine} and skip incremental loading for now. 
Place the code in riot_games_pipeline.py and name the pipeline riot_games_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 riot_games_pipeline.py and await further instructions.

  3. 🔒 Set up credentials

    Authentication uses OAuth2 bearer tokens. Include the access token in the Authorization header as "Bearer {accessToken}". When directing users to login, include the cpid (current platform id) scope to ensure the OAuth access token is generated with that scope, which enables the cpid field to be returned from userinfo requests at https://auth.riotgames.com/userinfo.

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

  4. 🏃‍♀️ Run the pipeline in the Python terminal in Cursor

    python riot_games_pipeline.py

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

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

  5. 📈 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 riot_games_pipeline show

  6. 🐍 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("riot_games_pipeline").dataset()
# get ["accounts/by-puuid/{puuid}"] table as Pandas frame
data.["accounts/by-puuid/{puuid}"].df().head()

Extra resources:

Next steps