How to load data from Trello to SQL Data Warehouse

Extract your data from Trello

Trello exposes a very rich API to developers. It is the same API used internally to build the web and mobile Trello apps that we all use and love. It is possible to build a completely new application on top of the API using the different components and resources it exposes or just use it to pull out data as we plan to do.

The Trello API follows RESTful principles, and it can be accessed through HTTP. As a RESTful API, interacting with it can be achieved using tools like CURL or Postman or using HTTP clients for your favorite language or framework. A few suggestions:

Trello also offers an official Javascript client/wrapper for its API, which can be found here. It is also possible to find numerous other unofficial SDKs. All it takes is a quick search on Google or Github.

Trello API Authentication

The Trello API supports authentication and Authorization by implementing the OAuth protocol. It’s important to understand that the Authentication Token, obtained through the OAuth workflow execution, gives your application the ability to make calls on behalf of your user from their context. This token grants access to the authenticated user’s boards, lists, cards, and other settings, depending on the permissions you requested in the authenticate method. So you have to handle it with care.

Trello rate limiting

To help prevent strain on Trello’s servers, our API imposes rate limits per API key for all issued tokens. There is a limit of 300 requests per 10 seconds for each API key and no more than 100 requests per 10-second interval for each token. If a request exceeds the limit, Trello will return a 429 error.

Endpoints and Available Resources

The Trello API exposes a large number of resources together with their associated HTTP endpoints that allow the users to interact with the platform as the web and mobile applications of Trello do. The most important resources are the following:

Board: anything related to the boards a user can create and manage in Trello
Card: operations about the cards that can be created inside boards
Checklist: it allows the creation and manipulation of checklists inside cards
Label: operations related to labels that can be created inside cards
List: operations on lists
Member: operations related to members of a board
Notification: operations about the notification system of the platform
Organization: manage organizations inside Trello

So, let’s assume that you have a board that helps you track one of your projects. The methodology doesn’t matter at this point. What is important is that you most probably will have cards associated with tasks, and these cards are holding the information that you would like to pull, store in a database like Azure SQL and analyze it further. First, we assume that we know the ID of our board,

our board id is 4eea4ffc91e31d1746000046

First, we want to get all the lists that this board includes. To do that, we execute a GET request on the following URL:

SH
https://api.trello.com/1/boards/4eea4ffc91e31d1746000046/lists?cards=open&card_fields=name&fields=name&key=[application_key]&token=[optional_auth_token]

If the request is successful, we will get back a response like the following:

JSON
[{
    "id": "4eea4ffc91e31d174600004a",
    "name": "To Do Soon",
    "cards": [{
        "id": "4eea503791e31d1746000080",
        "name": "Finish my awesome application"
    }]
}, {
    "id": "4eea4ffc91e31d174600004b",
    "name": "Doing",
    "cards": [{
        "id": "4eea503d91e31d174600008f",
        "name": "Learn about the Trello API"
    }, {
        "id": "4eea522c91e31d174600027e",
        "name": "Figure out how to read a user's board list"
    }]
}, {
    "id": "4eea4ffc91e31d174600004c",
    "name": "Done",
    "cards": [{
        "id": "4eea501f91e31d1746000062",
        "name": "Get a key to use in my API requests"
    }, {
        "id": "4eea502b91e31d1746000071",
        "name": "Find out where the Trello API documentation is"
    }]
}]

The above JSON response includes all the lists that our product has. Each least will contain cards with tasks, and for example, if we have a card inside the Done list, it means that the associated task is completed.
After we got a list of all the lists, we can start fetching each list’s cards. Again we do that by executing a GET request to the appropriate endpoint, using the IDs of the lists that we have extracted from the previous response. A typical URL for fetching the cards of a list looks like the following:

SH
https://api.trello.com/1/lists/4eea4ffc91e31d174600004a/cards?key=[application_key]&token=[optional_auth_token]

And the result of a successful request to the above endpoint will result in something with the following structure:

JSON
[{
    "id": "4eea503791e31d1746000080",
    "badges": {
        "votes": 0,
        "viewingMemberVoted": false,
        "subscribed": false,
        "fogbugz": "",
        "checkItems": 0,
        "checkItemsChecked": 0,
        "comments": 0,
        "attachments": 0,
        "description": false,
        "due": null
    },
    "checkItemStates": [],
    "closed": false,
    "dateLastActivity": "2011-12-15T19:53:27.228Z",
    "desc": "",
    "descData": null,
    "due": null,
    "email": null,
    "idAttachmentCover": null,
    "idBoard": "4eea4ffc91e31d1746000046",
    "idChecklists": [],
    "idLabels": [],
    "idList": "4eea4ffc91e31d174600004a",
    "idMembers": [],
    "idMembersVoted": [],
    "idShort": 3,
    "labels": [],
    "manualCoverAttachment": false,
    "name": "Finish my awesome application",
    "pos": 65536,
    "shortLink": "XlG8S7ll",
    "shortUrl": "https://trello.com/c/XlG8S7ll",
    "subscribed": null,
    "url": "https://trello.com/c/XlG8S7ll/3-finish-my-awesome-application"
}]

We have retrieved all the relevant to our project information from our board. We just need to remodel our data in an appropriate way to query it on a database like Azure SQL and, of course, ensure that we properly load the data to it. After we do that, we are ready to start querying our Trello data and learning everything related to the performance of our teams and projects.

Load Data from Trello to SQL Data Warehouse

SQL Data Warehouse support numerous options for loading data, such as:

PolyBase
Azure Data Factory
BCP command-line utility
SQL Server integration services

As we are interested in loading data from online services by using their exposed HTTP APIs, we will not consider the usage of BCP command-line utility or SQL server integration in this guide. We’ll consider the case of loading our data as Azure storage Blobs and then use PolyBase to load the data into SQL Data Warehouse.

Accessing these services happens through HTTP APIs. As we see again, APIs play an important role in both the extraction and the loading of data into our data warehouse. You can access these APIs by using a tool like CURL or Postman. Or use the libraries provided by Microsoft for your favorite language. Before you upload any data, you have to create a container similar to a concept to the Amazon AWS Bucket. Creating a container is a straightforward operation, and you can do it by following the instructions found on the Blog storage documentation from Microsoft. As an example, the following code can create a container in Node.js.

JAVASCRIPT
blobSvc.createContainerIfNotExists('mycontainer', function(error, result, response){
  if(!error){
    // Container exists and allows
    // anonymous read access to blob
    // content and metadata within this container
  }
});

After the creation of the container you can start uploading data to it by using again the given SDK of your choice in a similar fashion:

JAVASCRIPT
blobSvc.createBlockBlobFromLocalFile('mycontainer', 'myblob', 'test.txt', function(error, result, response){
  if(!error){
    // file uploaded
  }
});

When you are done putting your data into Azure Blobs, you can load it into SQL Data Warehouse using PolyBase. To do that, you should follow the directions in the Load with PolyBase documentation. In summary, the required steps to do it are the following:

create a database master key
create a database scoped credentials
create an external file format
create an external data source

PolyBase’s ability to transparently parallelize loads from Azure Blob Storage will make it the fastest loading data tool. After configuring PolyBase, you can load data directly into your SQL Data Warehouse by simply creating an external table that points to your data in storage and then mapping it to a new table within SQL Data Warehouse.

Of course, you will need to establish a recurrent process that will extract any newly created data from your service, load them in the form of Azure Blobs and initiate the PolyBase process for importing the data again into SQL Data Warehouse. One way of doing this is by using the Azure Data Factory service. In case you would like to follow this path, you can read some good documentation on how to move data to and from Azure SQL Warehouse using Azure Data Factory.

The best way to load data from Trello to SQL Data Warehouse and possible alternatives

So far, we just scraped the surface of what can be done with Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse and how to load data into it. The way to proceed relies heavily on the data you want to load, from which service they are coming from, and the requirements of your use case. Things can get even more complicated if you want to integrate data coming from different sources.

Instead of writing, hosting, and maintaining a flexible data infrastructure, a possible alternative is to use a product like RudderStack to handle this kind of problem automatically.

Rudderstack integrates with multiple sources or services like databases, CRM, email campaigns, analytics, and more.