Load Zoho Inventory data in Python using dltHub

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

In this guide, we'll set up a complete Zoho Inventory 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 zoho_inventory_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://{domain}.zoho.com/inventory/v1/",
            "auth": {
                "type": "bearer",
                "token": access_token,
            },
        },
        "resources": [
            "items",
            "item_groups",
            "organizations"
            ],
    }
    [...]
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


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

Items: Retrieves a list of items in the inventory.
Item Groups: Fetches item groups for organization.
Organizations: Lists the organizations associated with the account.
Contacts: Accesses contact information.
Item Adjustments: Handles adjustments made to items in inventory.
Warehouses: Provides details about warehouses.
Transfer Orders: Manages transfer orders between warehouses.
Sales Orders: Retrieves sales order information.
Packages: Gets details about packages.
Invoices: Accesses invoice data.
Purchase Orders: Retrieves purchase order information.
Credit Notes: Manages credit notes issued.
Users: Lists users who have access.

You will then debug the Zoho Inventory 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 Zoho Inventory support.
```
dlt init dlthub:zoho_inventory 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 Zoho Inventory API, as specified in @zoho_inventory-docs.yaml 
Start with endpoints "items" and "item_groups" and skip incremental loading for now. 
Place the code in zoho_inventory_pipeline.py and name the pipeline zoho_inventory_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 zoho_inventory_pipeline.py and await further instructions.

🔒 Set up credentials

The authentication method used is OAuth2, specifically utilizing a refresh token flow. The necessary credentials include a client ID, client secret, and refresh token, all of which must be included in the header for authorization.

To get the appropriate API keys, please visit the original source at https://www.zoho.com/inventory/. 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 zoho_inventory_pipeline.py

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


Pipeline zoho_inventory load step completed in 0.26 seconds
1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset zoho_inventory_data
The duckdb destination used duckdb:/zoho_inventory.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 zoho_inventory_pipeline show --dashboard
```
🐍 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("zoho_inventory_pipeline").dataset()
# get "items" table as Pandas frame
data.items.df().head()
```

Running into errors?

It is important to ensure that the correct domain suffix is used based on the data center location. Additionally, if you encounter a 401 Unauthorized error, verify the OAuth credentials and the validity of the access token.

Extra resources:

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