In this tutorial, we'll guide you through building a real-time API to ingest, process, and analyze customer feedback. Understanding customer sentiment and product performance is crucial for businesses to make informed decisions and improve their offerings. By leveraging Tinybird, we will create an API that enables real-time tracking of customer feedback across various products, focusing on sentiment analysis, ratings, and identifying emerging trends. Tinybird is a data analytics backend for software developers. You use Tinybird to build real-time analytics APIs without needing to set up or manage the underlying infrastructure. Tinybird offers a local-first development workflow, git-based deployments, resource definitions as code, and features for AI-native developers. This tutorial will explore how Tinybird's data sources and pipes can be utilized to ingest raw customer feedback, transform this data, and publish Endpoints for querying this information in real-time.
Understanding the data
Imagine your data looks like this:
{"feedback_id": "fb_6577", "customer_id": "cust_577", "product_id": "prod_77", "rating": 3, "feedback_text": "Shipping was too slow", "sentiment": "negative", "tags": ["quality"], "timestamp": "2025-04-25 23:07:53"} {"feedback_id": "fb_4020", "customer_id": "cust_20", "product_id": "prod_20", "rating": 1, "feedback_text": "Great product!", "sentiment": "neutral", "tags": [], "timestamp": "2025-04-28 19:37:10"} ... ``` {% endraw %} This data represents individual feedback events from customers, including a unique feedback ID, customer ID, product ID, rating, feedback text, sentiment analysis results (positive, neutral, negative), associated tags, and a timestamp. To store this data, we create a Tinybird datasource named {% raw %}`feedback_events`{% endraw %} with the following schema: {% raw %} ```json DESCRIPTION > Raw customer feedback events ingested in real-time SCHEMA > `feedback_id` String `json:$.feedback_id`, `customer_id` String `json:$.customer_id`, `product_id` String `json:$.product_id`, `rating` Int32 `json:$.rating`, `feedback_text` String `json:$.feedback_text`, `sentiment` String `json:$.sentiment`, `tags` Array(String) `json:$.tags[:]`, `timestamp` DateTime `json:$.timestamp` ENGINE "MergeTree" ENGINE_PARTITION_KEY "toYYYYMM(timestamp)" ENGINE_SORTING_KEY "timestamp, product_id, customer_id" The schema design choices, such as sorting keys, significantly impact query performance by optimizing how data is stored and accessed. To ingest data into this datasource, we leverage Tinybird's Events API:
curl -X POST "https://api.europe-west2.gcp.tinybird.co/v0/events?name=feedback_events&utm_source=DEV&utm_campaign=tb+create+--prompt+DEV" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $TB_ADMIN_TOKEN" \ -d '{...}' Tinybird's Events API allows you to stream JSON/NDJSON events from your application frontend or backend with a simple HTTP request. It provides real-time ingestion with low latency, ideal for live customer feedback scenarios. Other ingestion methods include the Kafka connector for event/streaming data and the Data Sources API and S3 connector for batch/file data.
Transforming data and publishing APIs
Pipes in Tinybird facilitate data transformation and the publication of APIs. They support batch transformations (copies), real-time transformations (Materialized views), and creating API endpoints.
Aggregating Feedback
The get_feedback_summary endpoint aggregates feedback statistics, offering optional filtering by date range and product ID:
DESCRIPTION > Endpoint to get aggregated feedback statistics with optional filtering by date range NODE get_feedback_summary_node SQL > % SELECT product_id, count() AS feedback_count, avg(rating) AS average_rating, countIf(sentiment = 'positive') AS positive_count, countIf(sentiment = 'neutral') AS neutral_count, countIf(sentiment = 'negative') AS negative_count FROM feedback_events ... TYPE endpoint This SQL logic calculates the average rating and counts feedback by sentiment, demonstrating how query parameters can make the API flexible.
Identifying Trending Tags
Similarly, the get_trending_tags endpoint identifies trending tags within customer feedback:
DESCRIPTION > Endpoint to identify trending tags in customer feedback with optional filtering NODE get_trending_tags_node SQL > % WITH ... ORDER BY tag_count DESC LIMIT {{Int(limit, 20)}} TYPE endpoint The SQL query extracts tags, counts them, and calculates their average rating, showcasing the use of materialized views to optimize data pipelines.
Detailed Feedback Retrieval
The get_feedback_by_product endpoint retrieves detailed feedback for a specific product:
DESCRIPTION > Endpoint to retrieve feedback for a specific product with optional filtering by rating and date range NODE get_feedback_by_product_node SQL > % SELECT ... ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT {{Int(limit, 100)}} TYPE endpoint This pipe uses templating logic to enable flexible filtering and sorting of feedback data, providing valuable insights into customer sentiment for specific products.
Deploying to production
To deploy these resources to Tinybird Cloud, use the command:
tb --cloud deploy This command deploys your project, creating production-ready, scalable API endpoints. Tinybird manages resources as code, allowing for seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines. Securing these APIs involves token-based authentication, ensuring that access is controlled and data remains secure. Example API call:
curl -X GET "https://api.europe-west2.gcp.tinybird.co/v0/[pipes?utm_source=DEV&utm_campaign=tb+create+--prompt+DEV](https://www.tinybird.co/docs/forward/work-with-data/pipes?utm_source=DEV&utm_campaign=tb+create+--prompt+DEV)/get_feedback_summary.json?token=$TB_ADMIN_TOKEN&..." Conclusion
In this tutorial, we've walked through creating a real-time API for customer feedback analysis using Tinybird. We covered how to ingest and store raw feedback data, transform it to derive meaningful metrics, and publish scalable, secure endpoints for querying this information in real-time. Tinybird simplifies the process of building and deploying real-time analytics APIs, handling infrastructure management so you can focus on delivering value from your data. Sign up for Tinybird to build and deploy your first real-time data APIs in a few minutes.
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