Latest changes to our API, SDK, & Documentation

[Albrey_Bristo-B]

Hey dev community,

We recently made a bunch of improvements to our API, SDK, and documentation! Check out the list of changes below.

Additions to our Documentation:

Surfacing Field IDs

Did you know that field ids and field names are interchangeable? Using only field names can be problematic when there are unexpected field name changes. To make this more prominent, we just added the field id in the fields section of the API docs along with a blurb explaining that field names and field ids are interchangeable. We hope this saves you the headache of dealing with unexpected field name changes in the future.

Documenting Synced Table Behavior

Synced tables are one of the most powerful tools in Airtable but are less editable than regular tables. These restrictions, such as being unable to add new records, are also present in the API.

To make these restrictions clearer we’ve updated the api docs so that

1. Fields in synced tables that cannot be edited are appropriately marked in the fields section of the docs

2. The create record and delete record sections of the docs inform you if they are unavailable because the table is a synced table

3. The update record section of the docs says that destructive updates will fail for synced tables and that regular updates will fail if you include a synced field.

API & SDK Improvements

Field IDs & Table IDs are now in REST API requests

IDs and names can be used interchangeably in API requests. Now you have the option to provide field and table ids in your API requests, and receive ids instead of names in the response. That way, you can avoid modifications to your API request even if the name of the field or table changes.

Workspace ID in blocks SDK

You can access the ID of the workspace that your base is in the blocks SDK by calling on the base.workspaceId property. Check out the blocks sdk documentation for more comprehensive syntax.

Field.updateNameAsync method to SDK and Scripting

Use the updateNameAsync method to update any field name from the SDK or a scripting block. Naming things is hard, hopefully this makes it a lot easier. Check out the APPs API documentation and Scripting API documentation to learn more about using this method.

Feel free to drop any questions or comments below!

[ScottWorld]

These are great improvements! Thanks, @Albrey_Bristo-Brown! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

[kuovonne]

Thank you for these updates!

Being able to use field IDs in the REST API is wonderful. I’m a little curious what happens if the name of one field matches the field ID of a different field. But it is just academic curiosity because I know that there is no practical reason for that to happen. You don’t need to waste any resources answering this question.

Exposing the workspace ID to the base in custom apps opens up some interesting possibilities. I currently license my apps on a per base level. This will let me license my apps on a per workspace level. Will there eventually be a workspace model that will expose the workspace subscription level?

The scripting documentation for attachment fields does not reflect the new deprecation timeline for urls expiring. It also is not clear if the urls will continue to serve up the actual files publicly or be “viewer” urls or require signing. There is a lot of uncertainty about this change, and better documentation will help, even if it is more explicitly stating what will not change.

[Jonathan_H]

Just wondering when work might resume on the metadata API, or whether it’s been abandoned?

I got this email over a year ago in March 2021 and the signup page is still saying pretty much the same thing in April 2022. Thanks!

thank you for your interest in Airtable’s Metadata API. We wanted to give you a quick update on the status of your API access request.

We received an overwhelming amount of interest in the API and have paused creating new developer tokens for the time being, as we iron out our infrastructure, monitoring, and policies here.

We’ll continue to keep your request however for when we are able to begin generating tokens again.

[TroyTessalone]

@Albrey_Bristo-Brown
Doesn’t appear the Field IDs work with the Form View prefill and hide options via URL parameters.
When will this be supported?
Thanks.