KeyanVakil/wire-data-pipeline

Get data from where it is to where it needs to be.

Steps

1. Identify the pipeline shape:

   • Source: external API, database, file, webhook, or stream?
   • Destination: your DB, a vector store, a data warehouse, or a file?
   • Frequency: one-time, scheduled, or real-time/event-driven?
   • Volume: a few records or millions?

2. Choose the right approach:

Airbyte (managed connectors, 300+ sources)

Best for: syncing from SaaS tools (Stripe, Salesforce, Postgres, S3, etc.) into your warehouse/DB.

• Self-host: docker compose up with Airbyte's docker-compose.yml
• Cloud: use Airbyte Cloud + create a connection via their UI or API
• Configure source → destination → sync schedule (cron or manual)
• Use normalization to flatten nested JSON into relational tables
• Trigger syncs via REST API: POST /api/v1/connections/sync

Custom scheduled pipeline (simple cases)

Best for: a single API source with simple transformation.

// Pseudo-pattern for a scheduled ingestion function
export async function syncData() {
  const records = await fetchFromSource()
  const transformed = records.map(transform)
  await upsertToDestination(transformed, { onConflict: 'id' })
}

• Run on a cron (Vercel Cron, Railway cron, GitHub Actions schedule)
• Always upsert, never overwrite blindly — include updated_at checks
• Log run start/end/count to a pipeline_runs table

Webhook ingestion (event-driven)

Best for: real-time data from Stripe, GitHub, etc.

• Validate the webhook signature before processing
• Persist raw payload first, process async (prevents data loss on processing errors)
• Use a queue (BullMQ, Inngest, etc.) if processing is slow

3. Add monitoring:
   • Log every run: source, records fetched, records written, errors, duration
   • Alert on consecutive failures (send to Slack/email)
   • Track last_synced_at so you can detect stale pipelines

Rules

• Always idempotent: running the pipeline twice should produce the same result
• Never delete destination data based on source absence without explicit confirmation
• Paginate all source fetches — don't assume one request gets everything
• Store credentials in env vars, never in pipeline config files committed to git