Using Airtable’s API
Airtable
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Using Airtable’s API
If you want to go even further with your customization, you can use Airtable’s API to connect your base to other environments and applications.
By diving into Airtable’s more advanced customization abilities, you can integrate your team’s outside services to Airtable, and read and write your base with outside tools.
Pro tip
The API (application programming interface) allows you to perform four core actions:
Create records
Read records
Update records
Delete records
Explore this article to learn more about specific functionality.
What's possible with Airtable's API?
The API increases the cross-functionality of Airtable, allowing you to build integrations into other applications, or create standalone tools that can communicate with your base. Let’s explore three examples of how you could use the Airtable API in your work:
1. Create new records from yet to be supported platforms
If you use a calendar app or data recording tools that aren’t natively supported yet with Airtable, the API allows you to write new records from those sources. For example, when an event gets scheduled on a calendar, an equivalent record is added to a base.
2. Update records from a 3rd party platform
The API allows you to keep your base’s records up to date by pulling in information and status updates from outside platforms. So if you use Airtable to monitor the progress of a development project, and your team uses an outside tracking platform, you can build a custom tool for updating your base using the API.
3. Combination update and delete from a 3rd party platform
The API can also update existing base entries, and delete information that’s no longer needed. If you’re planning an event, you could use the API to update the location, even if it’s being organized on an outside platform.
Pro tip: API for Enterprise Scale
We have enterprise specific APIs that give you metadata about your bases (base names, fields etc.) and users.
Understanding your API key
Each Airtable account only has one API key. Before you can start using your API, you need to generate the unique API key for your account. Important: Keep this API key secure, as it’s functionally a password that allows access to your base.
Try it now: Run an API event
Using Airtable's API documentation, you'll be able to explore the steps to setting up an API in any base in your account.
Each base has its own, unique API documentation, which changes as the base updates. This documentation explains the functionality of the API, the tools you have access to and their limitations, and how to interact with the data in that specific base.
To get started, explore the documentation for your bases here.
