Airtables and attachment options and storage

Deko · ‎Mar 18, 2021

If you link to an image on the web (or through dropbox or google drive) does it still upload that image into your airtable storage space? In other words, does it count towards your data limit?

ScottWorld · ‎Mar 18, 2021

What do you mean by “link to an image”? Are you talking about putting a link into a URL field?

No, that doesn’t count towards your limit.

Only files in attachment fields count towards your limit.

Deko · ‎Mar 18, 2021

I was talking about the attachment field. I guess no matter which method I use to add a photo to the attachment field it counts towards my limit. Even though I point to a photo on the web (NOT via URL Field, but attachment), it still uploads it to my data limit.

Airtables is looking less and less like a solution to my project. :frowning:

I am guessing there is no way to display a photo via the URL field type?

ScottWorld · ‎Mar 18, 2021

Hmmm, I don’t know about that. But possibly!

I would check out all of the Airtable Apps to see if any of them can render a preview of a URL field.

Please post back here with what you discover!

Bill_French · ‎Mar 19, 2021

There are many ways to do this. A script block invoked by a button, for example, is able to to load the image from a URL and render it.

Deko · ‎Mar 19, 2021

But I need the image to be displayed in the card view for a website. Like it has the company logo and you click on that logo to display more information on that company.

Bill_French · ‎Mar 19, 2021

You need Trello. …

Deko · ‎Mar 19, 2021

I thought about that, but I don’t know if it can display database things as I want. I already use Trello for other projects.

kuovonne · ‎Mar 19, 2021

It sounds like you want to be able to display an image in a card view of the record on a website, but not have the image count against your base’s attachment limit.

Can you share a bit more about your use case?

How are you displaying the card on your website? Are you using a shared view of your table?
How many GB of images do you want to display?
What Airtable plan are you on? (A free plan has a limit of 2GB per base. A pro plan has a limit of 20GB per base.)
Who is hosting the original image and controls the image’s url? Your dropbox or google account? Some other organization?
Is the problem of having the files as attachment strictly a monetary one? Or do you need a “single source of truth” for the images?

If you have budget, here are some options:

pay to upgrade to a pro workspace and get more attachment space (although this will not solve the problem of having images in two locations and possibly getting out of sync).
pay for a 3rd party portal like miniExtensions, which can be setup to show an image from a url.

Deko · ‎Mar 19, 2021

I am making a database for resin dolls. There are over 3,000. I use the cards to display the doll image, then they can click on it to show more information about that doll. That is a lot of images. I plan to upgrade to a PERSONAL plus plan on air tables, but that about all I can afford until I find another solution. Right now, there is hardly anything in the database, but that will change in the future.

I am more than on a budget, I’m flat broke so the large sum miniExtensions wants is out of the question. This is why it is so important to conserve space because I can’t afford those big upgrade plans. I wanted to use google sheets for this database (Its FREE), but I do not know any SQL code or anything so this is basically my only option at this point and things like sheet2site are way too expensive.

These dolls are very…correct cough and are much like anime resin figures. But if you would like to see what I am talking about, you can go to Find a Doll - DOLL FEATURE FINDER. NSFW warning on some.

I am aware that the hobby is very weird, but I only do weird :winking_face: