Extracting particular data to add to my website

[Adam_Balcomb]

Hi Everyone! I have a table which holds information for schools across the UK, including the number of pupils currently at that school. At the bottom of the table it automatically sums the total number of pupils across the entire table. Is it possible to extract the total sum amount and embed this information into the corner of a website? such as using some form of HTML code? Just want the sum total to be displayed outside the airtable environment.

[kuovonne]

You cannot do this with just HTML. With just HTML, you can create a new shared table that shows the sum total. However, you would have to embed the whole table. Even if you link to just the record, the entire table appears.

[Adam_Balcomb]

what I figured, in the end I shared a view of the whole table and slid it upwards underneath the webpage header which masks the table, leaving the sum totals at the bottom visible. Crude but works!

[kuovonne]

That sounds like a really creative solution! Thanks for coming back and sharing.

I tried your trick and it worked like a charm. I set the height and width of the iframe to be really tiny so there would be less to cover up with a different object.

[Bill_French]

Adam_Balcomb:

slid it upwards underneath the webpage header which masks the table, leaving the sum totals at the bottom visible.

When you do things like that, you’ll want to make sure you test with many browsers because there are a number of interpretations browser makers use concerning hidden objects on a page. This tool might help and you may be surprised how this content looks on 200 different browser versions.

Another issue that this may cause is the impact on your SEO for that page. Hidden objects are a key indicator of deceptive publishing practices and while you are certainly not being intentionally deceptive with this trick, your page (and domain) could be mistaken as a nefarious actor. When that happens, it will be as if the Interweb lights were turned out on your business and it will take a lot of work to get the power back on.

The right way to do this is to use the Airtable API to pull data values out of Airtable and into your web server environment. Then blend those metrics into your page(s) natively as needed.

[kuovonne]

Are you really limited to just HTML & CSS?

A middle ground between plain HTML/CSS and the Airtable API is the Airpress WordPress plug-in. You wouldn’t have to know anything about the API to use it. The Airpress plug-in has a much lower learning curve than the API. It would have to be a WordPress site, though …