Airtable Login System using API

[rebal15]

Ok so I know that this would be fairly complex, and may not be possible, but if it is, how would I go about making a login system using Airtable. I am trying to see if I can use Airtable as the backend database to something, and I’d like to try and refrain from using an SQL database, if possible. Of course, if completely necessary, I am completely comfortable doing so.

Any help is appreciated.

[kuovonne]

Try reading the web article that I linked to. It will give you a lot of background info and things to think about. Plus it includes links to the actual code.

[rebal15]

Only trouble is, is that I am using PHP, not JavaScript. I decided it’s safer not to use the JS API, I have absolutely no clue how to use JavaScript.

[kuovonne]

The article is still a good place to start.

I wrote my code in PHP. I only used JavaScript in the client.

[rebal15]

Fair enough. So far, I’ve sort of written my own API, for my needs.

[kuovonne]

rebal15:

I decided it’s safer not to use the JS API, I have absolutely no clue how to use JavaScript.

Why do you think the JS API isn’t safe?

If you want to write a web app with any client side interactivity, you’re going to have to learn JavaScript. If you want to use the Airtable Scripting Block, you’re also going to need JavaScript.

If you already know PHP, learning JavaScript is easy. (But I don’t recommend trying to learn both languages at the same time.)

[rebal15]

No, as in, I decided to ‘play it safe’. I didn’t mean that it is not secure.

[Bill_French]

kuovonne:

building a user portal was considerably more difficult than Bill’s three steps imply.

Just to be clear - “Bill’s” three steps represent the broader psuedo-process of a login page, not a portal, and certainly not trivial. In fact, I recommended it not be the recommended approach so the implication I made was don’t do it. :winking_face:

[Bill_French]

rebal15:

I think what I’ll do is use the queryFilter to find a username, get the hashed password associated with that username, and compare it to the password inputted.

Yep - that works. Just be clear that if a user struggles to remember a password, this multiplies the request-responses needed to get someone logged in. This is typically not a big issue unless you have dozens of people logging in at about the same time and if so, you’ll likely have to consider the rate limiting on the Airtable API. The first approach tends to avoid this.

This is one of the tradeoffs in web app development - do you make a single aggregate call to set the stage for unanticipated follow-on data needs in the client? Or, do you use multiple HTTP POST sessions for each process? I tend to tilt toward caching data forward to meet the next likely data need.

[kuovonne]

Airtable as a back end for a user portal definitely has scalability issues.
However, for small projects and initial proof-of-concept designs, it can work very well. The ease in viewing and editing the data make it much easier to start with versus an SQL database that does’t have a pretty front end.

Once you have a working prototype, you can then move to an SQL database on your server if you need to.

[Tamatoa_Ruahe]

This will help me in my research,
thank you.