Export from Facebook Marketing to GCS

CloudQuery is an open-source data integration platform that allows you to export data from any source to any destination.

The CloudQuery Facebook Marketing plugin allows you to sync data from Facebook Marketing to any destination, including GCS. It's free, open source, requires no account, and takes only minutes to get started.

Ready? Let's dive right in!

Step 1. Install the CloudQuery CLI

The CloudQuery CLI is a command-line tool that runs the sync. It supports MacOS, Linux and Windows.

brew install cloudquery/tap/cloudquery

Step 2. Configure the Facebook Marketing source plugin

Create a configuration file for the Facebook Marketing plugin and set up authentication.

Configuration

Create a file called facebookmarketing.yaml and add the following contents:

kind: source
spec:
  # Source spec section
  name: facebookmarketing
  path: cloudquery/facebookmarketing
  version: "v3.0.10"
  tables: ["*"]
  destinations: ["gcs"]

  spec:
    # Facebook Marketing Spec section

    # You can find the ad_account_id in the Facebook Ads Manager: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager/accounts/
    ad_account_id: "AD_ACCOUNT_ID"
    # See the "authentication section" on how to create an access token
    access_token: "ACCESS_TOKEN"

Fine-tune this configuration to match your needs. For more information, see the Facebook Marketing Plugin ↗ page in the docs.

Authentication

In order for CloudQuery to sync data from Facebook Marketing, you will need a Facebook Marketing access token. You will need to follow the following steps (if you don't have them set up already):

Create a business app in the Meta App dashboard (opens in a new tab). See Facebook's documentation (opens in a new tab). Make sure to choose the "Business" application type, and to link it to your business account.

Add the "Marketing API" capability to your application. You should now see a dropdown "Marketing API" menu. In this dropdown, under Tools, you will be able to generate your access token. See also Facebook's documentation (opens in a new tab)
You will also need to find your ad_account_id, which you can find in the Facebook Ads Manager (opens in a new tab). (See documentation (opens in a new tab)).

CloudQuery only ever makes READ calls to the API, but due to the way the Facebook permission model works, some of the tables also require ads_management permissions.

Step 3. Configure the GCS destination plugin

Create a configuration file for the GCS plugin and set up authentication.

Configuration

Create a file called gcs.yaml and add the following contents:

This example configures a GCS destination, to create CSV files in gcs://bucket_name/path/to/files.

kind: destination
spec:
  name: "gcs"
  path: "cloudquery/gcs"
  version: "v3.4.9"
  spec:
    bucket: "bucket_name"
    path: "path/to/files"
    format: "csv" # options: parquet, json, csv
    format_spec:
      # CSV-specific parameters:
      # delimiter: ","
      # skip_header: false

    # Optional parameters
    # compression: "" # options: gzip
    # no_rotate: false
    # batch_size: 10000
    # batch_size_bytes: 52428800 # 50 MiB
    # batch_timeout: 30s

Note that the GCS plugin only supports append write-mode. The (top level) spec section is described in the Destination Spec Reference.

Fine-tune this configuration to match your needs. For more information, see the GCS Plugin ↗ page in the docs.

Authentication

The GCS plugin authenticates using your Application Default Credentials (opens in a new tab). Available options are all the same options described here (opens in a new tab) in detail:

Local Environment:

gcloud auth application-default login (recommended when running locally)

Google Cloud cloud-based development environment:

When you run on Cloud Shell or Cloud Code credentials are already available.

Google Cloud containerized environment:

When running on GKE use workload identity (opens in a new tab).

Google Cloud services that support attaching a service account (opens in a new tab):

Services such as Compute Engine, App Engine and functions supporting attaching a user-managed service account which will CloudQuery will be able to utilize.

On-premises or another cloud provider

The suggested way is to use Workload identity federation (opens in a new tab)
If not available you can always use service account keys and export the location of the key via GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS. (Not recommended as long-lived keys are a security risk)

Step 4. Start the Sync

Run the following command in your terminal to start the sync

cloudquery sync facebookmarketing.yaml gcs.yaml

And away we go! 🚀 The sync will run until completion, fetching all selected tables from Facebook Marketing. Any errors will be logged to a file called cloudquery.log.

Export from Facebook Marketing to GCS

Step 1. Install the CloudQuery CLI

Step 2. Configure the Facebook Marketing source plugin

Configuration

Authentication

Step 3. Configure the GCS destination plugin

Configuration

Authentication

Step 4. Start the Sync

Further Reading