How to load data from Pexels API to Kafka

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Pexels API data into Kafka within minutes.

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Pexels API

The Pexels API enables programmatic access to the entire Pexels content library, including photos, videos. All content is free, and you're welcome to use Pexels content for anything, as long as it stays within our guidelines.The Pexels API is a RESTful JSON API, and you can interact with it from any language or framework with an HTTP library. Alternatively, Pexels maintains some official client libraries that you can use.

Kafka

A communication solutions agency, Kafka is a cloud-based / on-prem distributed system offering social media services, public relations, and events. For event streaming, three main functionalities are available: the ability to (1) subscribe to (read) and publish (write) streams of events, (2) store streams of events indefinitely, durably, and reliably, and (3) process streams of events in either real-time or retrospectively. Kafka offers these capabilities in a secure, highly scalable, and elastic manner.

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TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

  1. set up Pexels API as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up Kafka as a destination connector
  3. define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Pexels API

The Pexels API enables programmatic access to the entire Pexels content library, including photos, videos. All content is free, and you're welcome to use Pexels content for anything, as long as it stays within our guidelines.The Pexels API is a RESTful JSON API, and you can interact with it from any language or framework with an HTTP library. Alternatively, Pexels maintains some official client libraries that you can use.

What is Kafka

A communication solutions agency, Kafka is a cloud-based / on-prem distributed system offering social media services, public relations, and events. For event streaming, three main functionalities are available: the ability to (1) subscribe to (read) and publish (write) streams of events, (2) store streams of events indefinitely, durably, and reliably, and (3) process streams of events in either real-time or retrospectively. Kafka offers these capabilities in a secure, highly scalable, and elastic manner.

Integrate Pexels API with Kafka in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

  1. A Pexels API account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A Kafka account.
  3. An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Pexels API and Kafka, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Pexels API to Kafka, it extracts data from Pexels API using the source connector, converts it into a format Kafka can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into Kafka via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Pexels API data for advanced analytics and insights within Kafka, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Pexels API as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte dashboard and click on "Sources" on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on the "Create a new source" button and select "Pexels API" from the list of available connectors.
3. Enter a name for your Pexels API source and click "Next".
4. In the "Connection Configuration" section, enter your Pexels API key in the "API Key" field.
5. Click "Test Connection" to ensure that your API key is valid and that Airbyte can connect to your Pexels account.
6. Once the connection is successful, click "Next" to proceed to the "Schema Selection" section.
7. In this section, you can choose which tables you want to replicate from your Pexels account. You can select all tables or only specific ones.
8. Click "Next" to proceed to the "Sync Schedule" section. Here, you can choose how often you want Airbyte to sync your Pexels data.
9. Once you have selected your sync schedule, click "Create Source" to save your Pexels API source.
10. You can now use your Pexels API source to replicate data to your destination of choice.

Step 2: Set up Kafka as a destination connector

1. First, you need to have an Apache Kafka destination connector installed on your system. If you don't have it, you can download it from the Apache Kafka website.  
2. Once you have the Apache Kafka destination connector installed, you need to create a new connection in Airbyte. To do this, go to the Connections tab and click on the "New Connection" button.  3. In the "New Connection" window, select "Apache Kafka" as the destination connector and enter the required connection details, such as the Kafka broker URL, topic name, and authentication credentials.  
4. After entering the connection details, click on the "Test Connection" button to ensure that the connection is working properly.  
5. If the connection test is successful, click on the "Save" button to save the connection.  
6. Once the connection is saved, you can create a new pipeline in Airbyte and select the Apache Kafka destination connector as the destination for your data.  
7. In the pipeline configuration, select the connection you created in step 3 as the destination connection.  
8. Configure the pipeline to map the source data to the appropriate Kafka topic and fields.  
9. Once the pipeline is configured, you can run it to start sending data to your Apache Kafka destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Pexels API data to Kafka

Once you've successfully connected Pexels API as a data source and Kafka as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Pexels API from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose Kafka from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Pexels API objects you want to import data from towards Kafka. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Pexels API to Kafka according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your Kafka data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Pexels API data.

Use Cases to transfer your Pexels API data to Kafka

Integrating data from Pexels API to Kafka provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

  1. Advanced Analytics: Kafka’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Pexels API data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Pexels API alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Pexels API, syncing to Kafka allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Pexels API has limits on historical data. Syncing data to Kafka allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: Kafka provides robust data security features. Syncing Pexels API data to Kafka ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: Kafka can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Pexels API data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Pexels API data in Kafka, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Pexels API provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to Kafka, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Pexels API table that needs to be converted to a Kafka table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

  1. Configure a Pexels API account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure Kafka as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Pexels API to Kafka after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
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Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
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Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
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How to load data from Pexels API to Kafka

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Pexels API data into Kafka within minutes.

TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

  1. set up Pexels API as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up Kafka as a destination connector
  3. define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Pexels API

The Pexels API enables programmatic access to the entire Pexels content library, including photos, videos. All content is free, and you're welcome to use Pexels content for anything, as long as it stays within our guidelines.The Pexels API is a RESTful JSON API, and you can interact with it from any language or framework with an HTTP library. Alternatively, Pexels maintains some official client libraries that you can use.

What is Kafka

A communication solutions agency, Kafka is a cloud-based / on-prem distributed system offering social media services, public relations, and events. For event streaming, three main functionalities are available: the ability to (1) subscribe to (read) and publish (write) streams of events, (2) store streams of events indefinitely, durably, and reliably, and (3) process streams of events in either real-time or retrospectively. Kafka offers these capabilities in a secure, highly scalable, and elastic manner.

Integrate Pexels API with Kafka in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

  1. A Pexels API account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A Kafka account.
  3. An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Pexels API and Kafka, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Pexels API to Kafka, it extracts data from Pexels API using the source connector, converts it into a format Kafka can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into Kafka via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Pexels API data for advanced analytics and insights within Kafka, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Pexels API as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte dashboard and click on "Sources" on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on the "Create a new source" button and select "Pexels API" from the list of available connectors.
3. Enter a name for your Pexels API source and click "Next".
4. In the "Connection Configuration" section, enter your Pexels API key in the "API Key" field.
5. Click "Test Connection" to ensure that your API key is valid and that Airbyte can connect to your Pexels account.
6. Once the connection is successful, click "Next" to proceed to the "Schema Selection" section.
7. In this section, you can choose which tables you want to replicate from your Pexels account. You can select all tables or only specific ones.
8. Click "Next" to proceed to the "Sync Schedule" section. Here, you can choose how often you want Airbyte to sync your Pexels data.
9. Once you have selected your sync schedule, click "Create Source" to save your Pexels API source.
10. You can now use your Pexels API source to replicate data to your destination of choice.

Step 2: Set up Kafka as a destination connector

1. First, you need to have an Apache Kafka destination connector installed on your system. If you don't have it, you can download it from the Apache Kafka website.  
2. Once you have the Apache Kafka destination connector installed, you need to create a new connection in Airbyte. To do this, go to the Connections tab and click on the "New Connection" button.  3. In the "New Connection" window, select "Apache Kafka" as the destination connector and enter the required connection details, such as the Kafka broker URL, topic name, and authentication credentials.  
4. After entering the connection details, click on the "Test Connection" button to ensure that the connection is working properly.  
5. If the connection test is successful, click on the "Save" button to save the connection.  
6. Once the connection is saved, you can create a new pipeline in Airbyte and select the Apache Kafka destination connector as the destination for your data.  
7. In the pipeline configuration, select the connection you created in step 3 as the destination connection.  
8. Configure the pipeline to map the source data to the appropriate Kafka topic and fields.  
9. Once the pipeline is configured, you can run it to start sending data to your Apache Kafka destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Pexels API data to Kafka

Once you've successfully connected Pexels API as a data source and Kafka as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Pexels API from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose Kafka from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Pexels API objects you want to import data from towards Kafka. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Pexels API to Kafka according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your Kafka data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Pexels API data.

Use Cases to transfer your Pexels API data to Kafka

Integrating data from Pexels API to Kafka provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

  1. Advanced Analytics: Kafka’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Pexels API data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Pexels API alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Pexels API, syncing to Kafka allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Pexels API has limits on historical data. Syncing data to Kafka allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: Kafka provides robust data security features. Syncing Pexels API data to Kafka ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: Kafka can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Pexels API data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Pexels API data in Kafka, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Pexels API provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to Kafka, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Pexels API table that needs to be converted to a Kafka table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

  1. Configure a Pexels API account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure Kafka as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Pexels API to Kafka after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter

Connectors Used

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What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter

Connectors Used

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Frequently Asked Questions

What data can you extract from Pexels API?

Pexels API provides access to a vast collection of high-quality images and videos that can be used for various purposes. The API offers a range of data categories, including:  

- Images: Pexels API provides access to millions of high-quality images that can be used for commercial and personal projects. The images are available in various resolutions and formats, including JPEG and PNG.  
- Videos: The API also offers access to a large collection of high-quality videos that can be used for commercial and personal projects. The videos are available in various resolutions and formats, including MP4 and MOV.  
- Search: Pexels API allows users to search for images and videos based on keywords, categories, and other parameters. The search results can be filtered by various criteria, such as orientation, size, and color.  
- Popular: The API provides access to a list of popular images and videos that are currently trending on the platform.  
- Curated Collections: Pexels API offers access to a range of curated collections of images and videos that are organized by theme, such as nature, technology, and business.  
- Contributors: The API also provides information about the contributors who have uploaded images and videos to the platform, including their names and profiles.

What data can you transfer to Kafka?

You can transfer a wide variety of data to Kafka. This usually includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data like transaction records, log files, JSON data, CSV files, and more, allowing robust, scalable data integration and analysis.

What are top ETL tools to transfer data from Pexels API to Kafka?

The most prominent ETL tools to transfer data from Pexels API to Kafka include:

  • Airbyte
  • Fivetran
  • Stitch
  • Matillion
  • Talend Data Integration

These tools help in extracting data from Pexels API and various sources (APIs, databases, and more), transforming it efficiently, and loading it into Kafka and other databases, data warehouses and data lakes, enhancing data management capabilities.

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter