Airtable API examples

Airtable is an interesting tool for web developer as it is as the crossroad of database ui like phpmyadmin, robotmongo, a spreadsheet like google spreadsheet and an api.

You can use airtable as an api in a nobackend strategy. Even if you end up using other data storage. It is a good way to start prototyping with true data. Its simplicity allow all team members even non technical to participate.

You can create your free account.

Where to find documentation about Airtable API ?

The main documentation is in your Airtable App and contextual to your data.

• Click on the contextual menu

Airtable API doc

• Then a documentation screen show up relevant to your database settings

![airtable3.png]

• A blog post explaining some changes (feb 2016) to the api client
• a codepen allowing to quickly url encode parameters (to play along with post man rest api client)

Airtable API usage examples

Let's look at some nice uses of airtable API.

In all examples {tableId} is to be replaced by your table Id. And {DatabaseId} by your database Id

• Limit number of items per page

  To do pagination

https://api.airtable.com/v0/{DatabaseId}/{TableId}?pageSize=1

• Filters items with a title equal to a defined value

  Exact title match

https://api.airtable.com/v0/{DatabaseId}/{TableId}?filterByFormula={title}="Ternes"

• Filters records using a math function on one of their number field

  We want to display records with a currency field "cost" superior to defined amount

https://api.airtable.com/v0/{DatabaseId}/{TableId}?filterByFormula={cost}>1000000

Filter a list by a related field

A related field relates 2 tables. Let's take an example.

A project table and an architect table. The "architect" field in the "project" table refer to the architect that have designed the project. An architect tables show more details on this architect.

The problem is that in the api the output of a related field is an array of the related records ids.

Related fields in airtable

So I wandered if the query was something like

Filter by formula

But it seems that is not the case, as the api always return this error mesage.

{
  "error": {
    "type": "INVALID_FILTER_BY_FORMULA",
    "message": "The formula for filtering records is invalid: please check your formula text."
  }
}

I've posted an issue on airtable.js client to know more about it. But after trial and error, tried with the name of the linked record (not it's id) and it worked !

Filter by formula 2

I am listing all projects of architects. I want to click on one architect name to have this list limited to only his projects. As we have just seen, I need his name to do the filtered projects request.

But now how to get the record name from the table query ? As I need it to make the query. Should I first hit a request to get all architect information, before making a request for his projects.

There seem to have a solution with the lookup fields

Lookup fields allow to list in the projects query a field of a related field table. As we need architect's name, we are going to choose architect table and name field. And that's it we have both the id and the name of the architect in our first project call.

Lookup airtable fields

Great !

So now the question is is there a way to query directly a list limited by one of it's related fields id? Which would be much more natural for a developer. Well I do no know yet :)