dlt-typesense

Typesense document destination for dlt. Load data into Typesense collections with proper write dispositions (append, replace, merge/upsert), not as a blind reverse-ETL sink.

Install dlt with Typesense

pip install dlt-typesense

Or with uv:

uv add dlt-typesense

For local development:

git clone https://github.com/marcopesani/dlt-typesense.git
cd dlt-typesense
uv sync --group dev

Destination capabilities

delete-insert and scd2 merge strategies and staging replace strategies (insert-from-staging, staging-optimized) are not supported — there is no SQL layer or staging dataset.

Setup guide

1. Install the package (see above).
2. Add credentials to .dlt/secrets.toml (or the matching DESTINATION__TYPESENSE__CREDENTIALS__* env vars). The api_key is required; without it the run fails before any load starts. The key is never written to logs, reprs, or error messages.

[destination.typesense.credentials]
host = "localhost"      # default: localhost
port = 8108             # default: 8108
protocol = "http"       # default: http
api_key = "local-dev-key"

3. Define a resource and a pipeline. The destination resolves by short name (destination="typesense") or by importing the factory:

import dlt
from dlt_typesense import typesense

@dlt.resource(name="products", write_disposition="merge", primary_key="sku")
def products():
    yield {"sku": "A1", "title": "Widget", "price": 9.99}

pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
    pipeline_name="shop",
    destination=typesense(),          # or destination="typesense"
    dataset_name="catalog",
)
pipeline.run(products())

4. Start a local Typesense with docker compose up -d and run the examples in examples/.

typesense_adapter

By default collections use Typesense auto schema (a .* catch-all field). typesense_adapter pins explicit typed fields for hinted columns and sets collection-level options. Unhinted columns still fall through to .* auto.

A type hint is a contract about both the schema and the document value. When you pin a dlt timestamp/date column to int64/int32, the load job stores Unix epoch seconds (Typesense's recommended date representation — range-filterable and sortable). When you pin a decimal/wei column to float/int64/int32, the exact decimal string on the wire is parsed to that numeric type. Apply the adapter to individual resources, not to a whole source.

from dlt_typesense import typesense, typesense_adapter

pipeline.run(
    typesense_adapter(
        products,
        facet="category",                      # shorthand for {"facet": True}
        sort=["price", "rating"],              # shorthand for {"sort": True}
        field_hints={
            "description": {"locale": "de", "infix": True},
            "last_update": {"type": "int64", "sort": True},  # timestamp → epoch
            "gltv_eur": {"type": "float", "sort": True},     # decimal → float
            "embedding": {"type": "float[]", "num_dim": 384},
            "summary_vec": {
                "type": "float[]",
                "embed": {
                    "from": ["title", "description"],
                    "model_config": {"model_name": "ts/e5-small"},
                },
            },
        },
        collection_hints={
            "default_sorting_field": "price",
            "token_separators": ["-"],
            "metadata": {"owner": "search-team"},
        },
    )
)

• field_hints accepts, per column: type, facet, index, optional, sort, infix, locale, stem, stem_dictionary, num_dim, vec_dist, hnsw_params, reference, async_reference, cascade_delete, range_index, store, truncate_len, token_separators, symbols_to_index, embed.
• collection_hints accepts: default_sorting_field, token_separators, symbols_to_index, enable_nested_fields, metadata, synonym_sets, curation_sets.
• no_remove_orphans=True disables orphan cleanup of nested-table documents under merge (see Orphan cleanup).
• Unknown parameter names raise ValueError when the adapter is called; value errors (e.g. a bad locale or vec_dist) surface as terminal errors from the server at load time.

Cleaning rows with add_map

The type contract never auto-parses text columns into arrays or numbers — that is data cleaning. Decode JSON-encoded strings (e.g. Redshift SUPER) with dlt's native add_map before loading:

import json as pyjson

def clean_row(row: dict) -> dict:
    raw = row.get("categories")
    row["categories"] = pyjson.loads(raw) if isinstance(raw, str) else (raw or [])
    row.setdefault("receive_marketing", False)
    return row

resource.add_map(clean_row)

pipeline.run(
    typesense_adapter(
        resource,
        field_hints={"categories": {"type": "string[]", "facet": True}},
    )
)

add_map sees whatever shape the source yields. With sql_database(backend="pyarrow") items are Arrow tables, not dicts — either use backend="sqlalchemy" for row-shaped items, or map the table (table.to_pylist() inside an add_yield_map). See examples/sql_incremental_sync_pipeline.py.

Write disposition

Replace

truncate-and-insert: drop and recreate the collection, then import. A concurrent reader can observe an empty collection window mid-replace.

Merge

• upsert (default): document id is a deterministic uuid5 of the primary_key (or user unique columns). Re-runs update existing documents.
• insert-only: document id from _dlt_id; existing documents are never modified.

Set merge (and the primary key) from the first run; otherwise later merges cannot reconcile documents created under append semantics. A merge table with neither a primary_key nor a unique column fails terminally rather than silently loading duplicates.

Orphan cleanup for nested tables

Nested lists become child collections (orders → orders__items → orders__items__parts). Under merge (upsert), a follow-up job runs after every load and deletes orphaned child documents — children whose parent row was re-loaded but which were not re-written, i.e. elements that disappeared from the parent's nested list:

pipeline.run(orders())  # o1 has items [a, b]
pipeline.run(orders())  # o1 now has items [a]  → the "b" document is deleted

Semantics:

• Scoped to the load. Only root rows present in the load are cleaned up; children of parents that were not re-synced are never touched, so incremental loads stay incremental.
• Emptied lists are handled. Re-loading a parent whose list became empty deletes all of its child documents.
• All nesting levels. Grandchild collections (and deeper) are cleaned the same way.
• Merge upsert only. insert-only merge, append, and replace never run cleanup (replace recreates collections instead).
• Opt out per resource with typesense_adapter(resource, no_remove_orphans=True) — re-loaded parents then leave stale child documents behind, as in versions before cleanup existed.

How it works: after all files of a merge table chain finish loading, a follow-up job collects the loaded root ids (_dlt_id) and, per child collection, exports the current child ids for those roots (_dlt_root_id filter), diffs them against the ids just loaded, and deletes the stale ones with batched filter_by requests (200 ids per request). Cost is proportional to the number of children of the re-loaded parents.

Cleanup keys on dlt's system columns only (_dlt_id, _dlt_root_id), which requires root-key propagation — dlt enables it automatically for merge. If your pipeline explicitly disables it, the cleanup job fails terminally; opt out with no_remove_orphans=True instead.

Append

Bulk import with action=upsert; document id from _dlt_id.

skip writes nothing for that table.

Data loading

Tables map to Typesense collections (dataset-qualified, e.g. catalog_products); rows become documents loaded via streamed JSONL bulk import.

Data types

Pinning a timestamp to float is rejected (Typesense floats are 32-bit and lose epoch-second precision). Use int64 for range filters / sort, or int32 when the column must be default_sorting_field (valid until 2038).

Dataset name

Collection names are {dataset_name}{dataset_separator}{table_name} (separator defaults to _). Empty dataset_name yields the bare table name. Names longer than 255 characters are truncated with a hash suffix.

Reserved id

Typesense reserves the top-level document id, which this destination manages (from _dlt_id or the merge key). A source column named id is renamed to __id by the naming convention, so its value is preserved and never silently overwritten.

Schema hints lifecycle

Hints apply at collection creation only: first load, every replace run, and dev-mode/full-refresh runs. Changing hints on an existing append/merge collection has no effect until the collection is recreated (a log line notes this). There is no schema PATCH/alter support — the safe path for production schema changes is recreate under a new name and switch a collection alias.

Additional destination options

Passed to typesense(...) or resolved from config (destination.typesense.*):

Run Typesense locally

docker compose up -d   # Typesense 30.2, API key local-dev-key

Production pattern: incremental SQL sync

Real syncs look like sql_database + incremental cursor + merge + hints + optional add_map. A declarative multi-collection config keeps each sync spec in one place:

COLLECTIONS = [
    {
        "collection": "users",
        "source": {"table": "user_stats"},
        "primary_key": "user_id",
        "timestamp_field": "last_update",
        "field_hints": {"last_update": {"type": "int64", "sort": True}},
        "transform": decode_categories,
    },
]

See examples/sql_incremental_sync_pipeline.py for a runnable SQLite version with --target, --limit, --full-refresh, and --dev-mode.

dbt support

The Typesense destination does not support dbt.

Syncing of dlt state

The Typesense destination supports syncing of the dlt state (incremental cursors survive clean runners).

Development

uv sync --group dev
uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run basedpyright
uv run pytest                 # unit tests (no server)

docker compose up -d          # start Typesense for integration tests
uv run pytest -m integration  # integration tests (fail, never skip, if unreachable)

See docs/architecture.md for module seams and scale notes.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. By contributing you agree to the Developer Certificate of Origin (sign off commits with Signed-off-by).

License

Apache License 2.0