The Common Solvent for REST APIs – O’Reilly

Knowledge scientists working in Python or R usually purchase knowledge by the use of REST APIs. Each environments present libraries that enable you make HTTP calls to REST endpoints, then remodel JSON responses into dataframes. However that’s by no means so simple as we’d like. Once you’re studying plenty of knowledge from a REST API, it is advisable to do it a web page at a time, however pagination works in a different way from one API to the subsequent. So does unpacking the ensuing JSON buildings. HTTP and JSON are low-level requirements, and REST is a loosely-defined framework, however nothing ensures absolute simplicity, by no means thoughts consistency throughout APIs.

What if there have been a manner of studying from APIs that abstracted all of the low-level grunt work and labored the identical manner in all places? Excellent news! That’s precisely what Steampipe does. It’s a device that interprets REST API calls immediately into SQL tables. Listed here are three examples of questions that you would be able to ask and reply utilizing Steampipe.

1. Twitter: What are current tweets that point out PySpark?

Right here’s a SQL question to ask that query:

choose
  id,
  textual content
from
  twitter_search_recent
the place
  question = 'pyspark'
order by
  created_at desc
restrict 5;

Right here’s the reply:

+---------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>
| id                  | textual content                                                                                           >
+---------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>
| 1526351943249154050 | @dump Tenho trabalhando bastante com Spark, mas especificamente o PySpark. Vale a pena usar um >
| 1526336147856687105 | RT @MitchellvRijkom: PySpark Tip ⚡                                                            >
|                     |                                                                                                >
|                     | When to make use of what StorageLevel for Cache / Persist?                                             >
|                     |                                                                                                >
|                     | StorageLevel decides how and the place knowledge needs to be s…                                           >
| 1526322757880848385 | Clear up challenges and exceed expectations with a profession as a AWS Pyspark Engineer. https://t.co/>
| 1526318637485010944 | RT @JosMiguelMoya1: #pyspark #spark #BigData curso completo de Python y Spark con PySpark      >
|                     |                                                                                                >
|                     | https://t.co/qf0gIvNmyx                                                                        >
| 1526318107228524545 | RT @money_personal: PySpark & AWS: Grasp Massive Knowledge With PySpark and AWS                    >
|                     | #ApacheSpark #AWSDatabases #BigData #PySpark #100DaysofCode                                    >
|                     | -> http…                                                                                    >
+---------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

The desk that’s being queried right here, twitter_search_recent, receives the output from Twitter’s /2/tweets/search/recent endpoint and formulates it as a desk with these columns. You don’t need to make an HTTP name to that API endpoint or unpack the outcomes, you simply write a SQL question that refers back to the documented columns. A type of columns, question, is particular: it encapsulates Twitter’s query syntax. Right here, we’re simply in search of tweets that match PySpark however we may as simply refine the question by pinning it to particular customers, URLs, sorts (is:retweet, is:reply), properties (has:mentions, has_media), and many others. That question syntax is similar regardless of the way you’re accessing the API: from Python, from R, or from Steampipe. It’s a lot to consider, and all you need to actually need to know when crafting queries to mine Twitter knowledge.

2. GitHub: What are repositories that point out PySpark?

Right here’s a SQL question to ask that query:

choose 
  title, 
  owner_login, 
  stargazers_count 
from 
  github_search_repository 
the place 
  question = 'pyspark' 
order by stargazers_count desc 
restrict 10;

Right here’s the reply:

+----------------------+-------------------+------------------+
| title                 | owner_login       | stargazers_count |
+----------------------+-------------------+------------------+
| SynapseML            | microsoft         | 3297             |
| spark-nlp            | JohnSnowLabs      | 2725             |
| incubator-linkis     | apache            | 2524             |
| ibis                 | ibis-project      | 1805             |
| spark-py-notebooks   | jadianes          | 1455             |
| petastorm            | uber              | 1423             |
| awesome-spark        | awesome-spark     | 1314             |
| sparkit-learn        | lensacom          | 1124             |
| sparkmagic           | jupyter-incubator | 1121             |
| data-algorithms-book | mahmoudparsian    | 1001             |
+----------------------+-------------------+------------------+

This seems to be similar to the primary instance! On this case, the desk that’s being queried, twitter_search_repository, receives the output from GitHub’s /search/repositories endpoint and formulates it as a desk with these columns.

In each instances the Steampipe documentation not solely exhibits you the schemas that govern the mapped tables, it additionally provides examples (Twitter, GitHub) of SQL queries that use the tables in varied methods.

Observe that these are simply two of many out there tables. The Twitter API is mapped to 7 tables, and the GitHub API is mapped to 37 tables.

3. Twitter + GitHub: What have house owners of PySpark-related repositories tweeted currently?

To reply this query we have to seek the advice of two completely different APIs, then be a part of their outcomes. That’s even more durable to do, in a constant manner, once you’re reasoning over REST payloads in Python or R. However that is the sort of factor SQL was born to do. Right here’s one technique to ask the query in SQL.

-- discover pyspark repos
with github_repos as (
  choose 
    title, 
    owner_login, 
    stargazers_count 
  from 
    github_search_repository 
  the place 
    question = 'pyspark' and title ~ 'pyspark'
  order by stargazers_count desc 
  restrict 50
),

-- discover twitter handles of repo house owners
github_users as (
  choose
    u.login,
    u.twitter_username
  from
    github_user u
  be a part of
    github_repos r
  on
    r.owner_login = u.login
  the place
    u.twitter_username shouldn't be null
),

-- discover corresponding twitter customers
  choose
    id
  from
    twitter_user t
  be a part of
    github_users g
  on
    t.username = g.twitter_username
)

-- discover tweets from these customers
choose
  t.author->>'username' as twitter_user,
  'https://twitter.com/' || (t.author->>'username') || '/standing/' || t.id as url,
  t.textual content
from
  twitter_user_tweet t
be a part of
  twitter_userids u
on
  t.user_id = u.id
the place
  t.created_at > now()::date - interval '1 week'
order by
  t.creator
restrict 5

Right here is the reply:

+----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------->
| twitter_user   | url                                                           | textual content                                >
+----------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------->
| idealoTech     | https://twitter.com/idealoTech/standing/1524688985649516544     | Can you discover artistic soluti>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | Be a part of our @codility Order #API Challe>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | #idealolife #codility #php          >
| idealoTech     | https://twitter.com/idealoTech/standing/1526127469706854403     | Our #ProductDiscovery group at idealo>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | Suppose you may resolve it? 😎          >
|                |                                                               | ➡️  https://t.co/ELfUfp94vB https://t>
| ioannides_alex | https://twitter.com/ioannides_alex/standing/1525049398811574272 | RT @scikit_learn: scikit-learn 1.1 i>
|                |                                                               | What's new? You possibly can verify the releas>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | pip set up -U…                     >
| andfanilo      | https://twitter.com/andfanilo/standing/1524999923665711104      | @edelynn_belle Thanks! Generally it >
| andfanilo      | https://twitter.com/andfanilo/standing/1523676489081712640      | @juliafmorgado Good luck on the reco>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | My recommendation: energy by means of it + a useless>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | I hated my first few quick movies bu>
|                |                                                               |                                     >
|                |                                                               | Wanting ahead to the video 🙂

When APIs frictionlessly turn into tables, you may dedicate your full consideration to reasoning over the abstractions represented by these APIs. Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, famously mentioned: “Simple issues needs to be straightforward, onerous issues needs to be doable.” The primary two examples are issues that needs to be, and are, straightforward: every is simply 10 traces of straightforward, straight-ahead SQL that requires no wizardry in any respect.

The third instance is a more durable factor. It will be onerous in any programming language. However SQL makes it doable in a number of good methods. The answer is made of 4 concise stanzas (CTEs, Widespread Desk Expressions) that type a pipeline. Every part of the pipeline handles one clearly-defined piece of the issue. You possibly can validate the output of every part earlier than continuing to the subsequent. And you are able to do all this with probably the most mature and widely-used grammar for choice, filtering, and recombination of knowledge.

Do I’ve to make use of SQL?

No! For those who like the concept of mapping APIs to tables, however you’d quite motive over these tables in Python or R dataframes, then Steampipe can oblige. Underneath the covers it’s Postgres, enhanced with foreign data wrappers that deal with the API-to-table transformation. Something that may connect with Postgres can connect with Steampipe, together with SQL drivers like Python’s psycopg2 and R’s RPostgres in addition to business-intelligence instruments like Metabase, Tableau, and PowerBI. So you should use Steampipe to frictionlessly eat APIs into dataframes, then motive over the info in Python or R.

However if you happen to haven’t used SQL on this manner earlier than, it’s value a glance. Think about this comparability of SQL to Pandas from How to rewrite your SQL queries in Pandas.

SQL	Pandas
choose * from airports	airports
choose * from airports restrict 3	airports.head(3)
choose id from airports the place ident = ‘KLAX’	airports[airports.ident == ‘KLAX’].id
choose distinct kind from airport	airports.kind.distinctive()
choose * from airports the place iso_region = ‘US-CA’ and sort = ‘seaplane_base’	airports[(airports.iso_region == ‘US-CA’) & (airports.type == ‘seaplane_base’)]
choose ident, title, municipality from airports the place iso_region = ‘US-CA’ and sort = ‘large_airport’	airports[(airports.iso_region == ‘US-CA’) & (airports.type == ‘large_airport’)][[‘ident’, ‘name’, ‘municipality’]]

We will argue the deserves of 1 type versus the opposite, however there’s no query that SQL is probably the most common and widely-implemented technique to specific these operations on knowledge. So no, you don’t have to make use of SQL to its fullest potential to be able to profit from Steampipe. However you may discover that you just wish to.