Connect your app to Looker

1. 1

   Ask your Looker administrator to create a dedicated service account and generate an API Client ID and Client Secret.

   Using a dedicated service account avoids tying the connection to an individual person and limits app access to only the necessary data models.

2. 2

   Confirm the service account role only has read access and includes the explore, see_looks, and access_data permissions.

   The connector does not enforce read-only restrictions automatically, so the Looker role must prevent accidental data changes or admin access.

3. 3

   Copy your bare Looker hostname, removing https:// and any trailing path slashes.

   The connector requires a clean hostname ending only in .looker.app or .cloud.looker.com and will reject standard URLs or custom domains.

4. 4

   Go to Connectors in Lovable, select Looker, click Connect, and enter the connection name, bare host, Client ID, and Client Secret.

   Lovable securely saves these credentials in its gateway and verifies that the API key is valid.

5. 5

   Set your sharing preferences under Sharing and click Connect at the bottom of the form.

   This determines whether the connection remains private to you or can be used by team members in your workspace.

6. 6

   In your Lovable project chat, prompt the assistant to link the Looker connection and build your dashboard or query interface.

   Linking allows the project to discover your models, choose metrics, and render charts in the app.

Use Looker and build an internal executive dashboard that shows monthly revenue and order count with a region filter, using our existing LookML measure definitions.

LookML

A data modeling language used in Looker where analysts define metrics, relationships, and business logic once so they can be reused across reports.

Explores

Pre-built views or starting points in Looker designed for querying specific topics without writing raw database queries.

Dimensions and Measures

Dimensions are categories like dates, status, or locations, while measures are calculated numbers like total revenue or count of orders.

Service account

A dedicated bot account created for integrations and software rather than a human user.

• Using an admin account or an account with edit permissions; the connector can alter Looker content if the connected account has rights to do so.
• Entering URLs with 'https://', paths, or custom company domains; the connector only supports bare hostnames ending in '.looker.app' or '.cloud.looker.com'.
• Pasting the Client Secret directly into the project chat or app code instead of entering it into the secure connector form.
• Expecting separate per-user permissions; every app user queries Looker using the single service account, so your app must filter out unauthorized customer rows.
• Expecting embedded Looker dashboards; this connector fetches raw query metrics to display in Lovable components rather than showing iframe dashboards.
• Running unfiltered queries without row limits, which can bypass cache and incur unexpected data warehouse compute fees.