How to Build an ETL App for DeTrack Data in Python with CData

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData API Driver for Python and the petl framework, you can build DeTrack-connected applications and pipelines for extracting, transforming, and loading DeTrack data. This article shows how to connect to DeTrack with the CData Python Connector and use petl and pandas to extract, transform, and load DeTrack data.

With built-in, optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live DeTrack data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from DeTrack, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to DeTrack and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to DeTrack Data

Connecting to DeTrack data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the DeTrack Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\DeTrack.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for DeTrack (see below).

DeTrack API Profile Settings

DeTrack uses API Key authentication. Your DeTrack API key is used to authenticate all requests via the X-API-Key header. You can obtain your API key from your DeTrack account settings at app.detrack.com under Settings > API & Webhooks.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• APIKey: Set this to your DeTrack API key.

After installing the CData DeTrack Connector, follow the procedure below to install the other required modules and start accessing DeTrack through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the required modules and frameworks:

pip install petl
pip install pandas

Build an ETL App for DeTrack Data in Python

Once the required modules and frameworks are installed, we are ready to build our ETL app. Code snippets follow, but the full source code is available at the end of the article.

First, be sure to import the modules (including the CData Connector) with the following:

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the connect function for the CData DeTrack Connector to create a connection for working with DeTrack data.

cnxn = mod.connect("Profile=C:\profiles\DeTrack.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';")

Create a SQL Statement to Query DeTrack

Use SQL to create a statement for querying DeTrack. In this article, we read data from the Routes entity.

sql = "SELECT Id, Name FROM Routes WHERE Date = '2026-05-20'"

Extract, Transform, and Load the DeTrack Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, we can use petl to extract, transform, and load the DeTrack data. In this example, we extract DeTrack data, sort the data by the Name column, and load the data into a CSV file.

Loading DeTrack Data into a CSV File

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'Name')

etl.tocsv(table2,'routes_data.csv')

With the CData API Driver for Python, you can work with DeTrack data just like you would with any database, including direct access to data in ETL packages like petl.

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData API Driver for Python to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to DeTrack data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.

Full Source Code

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

cnxn = mod.connect("Profile=C:\profiles\DeTrack.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';")

sql = "SELECT Id, Name FROM Routes WHERE Date = '2026-05-20'"

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'Name')

etl.tocsv(table2,'routes_data.csv')