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    Getting started with Airtable's Web API
    • 25 Nov 2024
    • 2 Minutes to read
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    Getting started with Airtable's Web API

    • Updated on 25 Nov 2024
    • 2 Minutes to read
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    Article summary

    Plan availability

    All plan types with varying call limitations

    Permissions

    • Generally, workspace Owner or base Creator permissions are useful for working with Airtable's Web API

    • Enterprise Scale and Business customers will also find that having admin privileges is helpful

    Platform(s)

    Web/Browser, Mac app, and Windows app

    Related reading

    API record limits

    You can access the documentation for the Web API here, or directly from your base by clicking on the Help button in the upper right-hand corner while you are logged in on a laptop or desktop. This will bring up a list of additional resources. You will find a link to the API documentation at the bottom of that list.

    When you list records with Airtable's API, you won't necessarily get all of them at once. Instead, you will receive them in pages of up to 100 records at a time. As soon as a table has more than 100 records, you will need to make multiple requests, one per page.

    Example

    NOTE

    You can use the pageSize parameter to change the number from 100 to a smaller number like 50, but 100 is the maximum and most users do not change this.

    If your table has 501 records, the results will be spread across 6 pages, and therefore 6 HTTP requests are needed to fully capture all of that table's records. Your first request might look something like this with your base's app id appxxx and the table name:

    https://api.airtable.com/v0/appxxx/TableName

    You will get the first page of records (under the "records" key), but if there is another page, you'll also get an "offset" that would look something like this:

    "offset": "itrSJ1l4jlPyxEG6c/recxxx"

    To fetch the next page (in other words, the next 100 records), you'll include that offset as a query parameter. For example:

    https://api.airtable.com/v0/appxxx/TableName?offset=itrSJ1l4jlPyxEG6c%2Frecxxx

    This will give you the records from the next page. If there's another page, you'll repeat the process—grab the offset and put it in the offset query parameter. When the response doesn't include an offset anymore, you know you've reached the last page and can stop.

    FAQs

    What can I do with the Airtable Web API?

    Consult the Web API Scopes documentation where you'll find a list of the various Web API endpoints and how each one functions.

    How do I get started?

    Is there a rate limit?

    Yes, the Web API has a rate limit of 5 requests per second, per base. This limit is the same across all pricing tiers and increased rate limits are not currently available. For more information, see the "Rate Limits" section of the API documentation.

    Are there API call limits?

    Yes. These vary by plan type:

    • Free plan - 1000 calls per workspace per month

    • Team plan - 100,000 calls per workspace per month

    • Business and Enterprise plans - Unlimited API calls (Still subject to other limits such as the rate limits discussed above)

    When I fetch records with the API, some of my fields are missing. Why is that?

    Returned records do not include any fields with "empty" values, e.g. "", [], or false. If you need to get the names of all fields in your table, you can create one record with all fields populated, and make a request to fetch that record.

    Can I get information about my base, such as the base schema, with the Web API?

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