Accessing the metadata API

[Taylor_Savage]

Hi everyone,

As part of our ongoing effort to make Airtable more and more extensible, we’re beginning to expand access to the Metadata API.

The metadata API gives you read-only access to a list of a user’s bases, as well as the specific schema of each base - things like what tables exist, what fields exist on those tables, etc.

Usage of this API currently requires a unique developer token, in addition to the user’s API key for whom you are looking to pull the metadata. You can view the metadata API documentation here, and request a developer token here.

We are considering in the longer-term simply rolling the metadata API functionality into the main Airtable API - this would require some deeper underlying structural changes, however, hence in the short-term we are bridging the gap by issuing individual tokens.

As always, we’re eager to get your feedback on what you’re looking to do with this and all Airtable API’s. The metadata API contains some known gaps - most obviously, that it is read-only; we’re working to prioritize which additional capabilities to support in the API, and your feedback and use-cases here are crucial inputs.

Thanks!
The Airtable Platform Team

[Taylor_Savage]

Hey all - appreciate the reports and patience here, a fix should be going out shortly that will restore access to the metadata API docs for those who have been unable to view them.

[Taylor_Savage]

Hey Shrey - we’re pushing out a fix to the docs access, but aren’t seeing any issues with the endpoint access.

A few things to check:

• Ensure the metadata API request contains both a users’s API key in the Authorization: Bearer header, and your secret metadata token in the X-Airtable-Client-Secret header.
• If you’re querying metadata about a specific base, ensure that the user who’s API key you’re using actually has access to the base in question.

[nish]

Super excited about the API. We submitted our request a few days ago. Do you have an update on the backlog? Thanks.