Advanced rules for data input and validation

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We are looking for a robust solution to record filtering, linking and validation based administrated rules.

Interesting chain - perhaps in support of Airtable vs the above comments - what do you want? If you want the feature rich elastic search, input, robus fast navigation and loading and filtering - yet you want to load up the grid CSS and front end usage from your browser and increase the database calls things will slow down

As it is from my perspective this grid is incredible - the optimisation work they have done is a little mindblowing - 4 years previous was the last time I used Airtable and the changes in performance (for me) are staggering (I’ve worked with commercial web app grids for the past 4 years as background - banking data, 1 second sync with millions of rows)

For any interested and devevlopers above, i’m using Airtable to prototype and test apps with customers - in 2 weeks we’ve built an ERP based on a commercial ERP database with 600 tables - sync to Notion or Coda via API’s for docs goals, and return - the list goes on.

I’ve never found this possible in excel or other grids the lack of rigiditiy - and yet flexibility - is such a sweet spot so I wanted to share some love for Airtable

If you can write js or use databases connect up tables to sql or even large excel or power BI - and control your data in different ways via the API which is excellent

I’m trying to break Airtable right now so I’ll share again when I find the weak spots :joy: for now I’m blown away - you’ll lose speed in the above validations, for those that think this is simple I’m going to call you out - imagine 1000 steps that can’t be skipped, no short cuts, that’s what it takes to optimise like Airtable has done - 1 per week, over 10 years? In just 4 years the changes I note are very large and would take ridiculous hours and people
Gratitute to all of you fellow perfectionists - let’s see what they come back with I wouldn’t complain also if they achieved it - BUT don’t slow down the grids too much or my use cases don’t exist for Airtable any more

Simple beginners tip (I’m the beginner here): I’m having success controlling validation by simple design structure - formulas as 1sts columns so they don’t overwrite in backlinks as an example - sync tables where the rule states if delete or filter status is different look up changes also

This was the example that brought me back to Airtable - the setup here and integrations opened my mind to Airtable being faster (than my previous experience) lots of smart design here to make this work, I was inspired:

Looks like you broke it, great job

Yes! Just received a notification also :grinning:

We just built this feature in our Advanced Form for Airtable. You can set certain rules for the field. The form won’t submit unless those rules are met. Right now it supports different conditions including “number of characters”. But we’re planning to add many more. Let us know if there’s a specific condition you’d like us to add.

We absolutely need both View Form and Interface Form input validation.

The problems caused by retroactively trying to fix accidentally bad data entered into a form is are huge - with the potential to cause an entire breakdown in production all because someone put a typo in their email. Such errors need to be caught when the user is entering in their email, not after they've hit the "Submit Form" button - where chaos then unfolds...

Airtable Devs, please please PLEASE bring View Form and Interface Form input validation to the market for 2023.

Unfortunately, we are considering to stop using AirTable due to the lack of input validation. The amount of issues with invalid data being input in our application is making it harder to scale its use, on top of making our dashboards useless as we need to keep cleaning the data. 

Hey @Davide_Cencini , I hear you! Airtable’s lack of built-in validation can be frustrating, especially when you’re used to strict rules like in Access. If you need to enforce things like character limits (e.g., exactly 27 for an IBAN), validate phone numbers, or set date ranges, the DataGuard extension could be what you’re looking for.

It lets you:

• Set minimum/maximum lengths for text fields (like IBANs or postal codes).
• Validate email and phone formats with regex.
• Enforce rules on dates (e.g., delivery dates can’t be before today).
• Mark certain fields as required so they’re never left blank.

It’s not native, but it can help keep your data clean and accurate.