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Read-Only API Key


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  • New Participant
  • 3 replies

Is there a read-only API key available, or this is this part of the “Granular Access” that is coming soon?

6 replies

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  • Participating Frequently
  • 22 replies
  • June 23, 2015

Hey Ken,

We don’t have a read-only API key just yet, but this is something we’ll likely do. CC’ing @Alexander_Sorokin, who is the engineer behind the Airtable API.


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  • Participating Frequently
  • 30 replies
  • June 23, 2015
Andrew11 wrote:

Hey Ken,

We don’t have a read-only API key just yet, but this is something we’ll likely do. CC’ing @Alexander_Sorokin, who is the engineer behind the Airtable API.


Hi Ken,

For now, you can create a separate “API user” and share the base with them as read-only. That user’s API key will only have read access to the base.

Alex


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  • Author
  • New Participant
  • 3 replies
  • June 23, 2015

Thanks, Andrew and Alexander!
We’ll give it a try.

BTW, are there resources/examples/tutorials on use of API besides the auto-generated API doc?


I’m also very interested in this to be able to use Airtable from the browser without sharing credentials. There is a way to “SHARE” a Read-only link to the Full database! Is there a way to do exactly the same via the API?


  • New Participant
  • 4 replies
  • May 2, 2019

IMHO creating a new user just to have read permissions to the API is quite overkilling


  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • March 7, 2020

Creating a separate user with ‘read-only’ permissions to access the API works, but that user needs an API_KEY, a key which is potentially exposed to our read-only ‘guest’.

Although our ‘API user’ might have read-only access to the database being shared, the user with the API-KEY potentially has write access to other features of the guest account.

Is there any precautions we should take to make sure the possessor of the ‘read-only’ account API-KEY doesn’t do something awful with the ‘read-only guest’ account?


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