airtable

What is airtable?

The airtable npm package allows you to interact with the Airtable API, enabling you to manage and manipulate data stored in Airtable bases. It provides a simple and intuitive interface for performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on Airtable records.

What are airtable's main functionalities?

Initialize Airtable

This code initializes the Airtable client with your API key and base ID, allowing you to interact with a specific Airtable base.

const Airtable = require('airtable');
const base = new Airtable({apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY'}).base('YOUR_BASE_ID');

Create a Record

This code creates a new record in the specified table with the given field values.

base('Table Name').create({
  'Field1': 'Value1',
  'Field2': 'Value2'
}, function(err, record) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
    return;
  }
  console.log(record.getId());
});

Read Records

This code retrieves records from the specified table and logs the value of 'Field1' for each record.

base('Table Name').select({
  maxRecords: 3,
  view: 'Grid view'
}).eachPage(function page(records, fetchNextPage) {
  records.forEach(function(record) {
    console.log('Retrieved', record.get('Field1'));
  });
  fetchNextPage();
}, function done(err) {
  if (err) { console.error(err); return; }
});

Update a Record

This code updates a specific record in the table with a new value for 'Field1'.

base('Table Name').update('recXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', {
  'Field1': 'Updated Value'
}, function(err, record) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
    return;
  }
  console.log(record.get('Field1'));
});

Delete a Record

This code deletes a specific record from the table.

base('Table Name').destroy('recXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', function(err, deletedRecord) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
    return;
  }
  console.log('Deleted record', deletedRecord.id);
});

Other packages similar to airtable

google-spreadsheet

The google-spreadsheet package allows you to interact with Google Sheets in a similar way to how airtable interacts with Airtable bases. It provides methods for reading, writing, and updating data in Google Sheets. Compared to airtable, it is more suited for users who prefer using Google Sheets as their data storage.

notion-client

The notion-client package provides an interface to interact with Notion databases. It allows you to perform CRUD operations on Notion pages and databases. Compared to airtable, it is more suitable for users who prefer using Notion for their data management and note-taking needs.

mongodb

The mongodb package is a driver for MongoDB, a NoSQL database. It allows you to perform CRUD operations on MongoDB collections. Compared to airtable, it is more suitable for users who need a more robust and scalable database solution.

README

The official Airtable JavaScript library.

Airtable.js

The Airtable API provides a simple way of accessing your data. Whether it's contacts, sales leads, inventory, applicant information or todo items, the vocabulary of the interactions closely matches your data structure. You will use your table names to address tables, column names to access data stored in those columns. In other words, the Airtable API is your own RESTful API for your base.

Installation

Node.js

To install Airtable.js in a node project:

npm install airtable

Airtable.js is compatible with Node 10 and above.

Browser

To use Airtable.js in the browser, use build/airtable.browser.js.

For a demo, run:

cd test/test_files
python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Edit test/test_files/index.html - put your BASE_ID and API_KEY (Be careful! You are putting your API key on a web page! Create a separate account and share only one base with it.)

Then open http://localhost:8000/ in your browser.

Airtable.js is compatible with browsers supported by the Airtable web app with the exception of Safari 10.0. Airtable.js supports Safari 10.1 and higher. See the technical requirements for more details.

Configuration

There are three configurable options available:

• apiKey - your secret API token. Visit /create/tokens to create a personal access token. OAuth access tokens can also be used.
• endpointUrl - the API endpoint to hit. You might want to override it if you are using an API proxy (e.g. runscope.net) to debug your API calls. (AIRTABLE_ENDPOINT_URL).
• requestTimeout - the timeout in milliseconds for requests. The default is 5 minutes (300000).

You can set the options globally via Airtable.configure:

Airtable.configure({ apiKey: 'YOUR_SECRET_API_TOKEN' })

Globally via process env (e.g. in 12factor setup):

export AIRTABLE_API_KEY=YOUR_SECRET_API_TOKEN

You can also override the settings per connection:

const airtable = new Airtable({endpointUrl: 'https://api-airtable-com-8hw7i1oz63iz.runscope.net/'})

Interactive documentation

Go to https://airtable.com/api to see the interactive API documentation for your Airtable bases. Once you select a base, click the "JavaScript" tab to see code snippets using Airtable.js. It'll have examples for all operations you can perform against your base using this library.

You can also view non-interactive API documentation at https://airtable.com/developers/web/api.

Promises

As of v0.5.0 all of the methods that take a done callback will return a Promise if you don't pass in a done callback.

For example:

table.select().firstPage(result => { ... })

is equivalent to

table.select().firstPage().then(result => { ... })

Tests

Tests are run via npm run test.

We strive for 100% test coverage. Some aspects may not be testable or suitable for test coverage. The tooling supports ignoring specific parts of a file documented here; use that as appropriate.

When you run the tests a coverage report will be generated at ./coverage/lcov-report/index.html which you can access in the browser for line by line reporting.