Is the scripting extension the same as the API?

[Evan_Dumas]

Hi there, I’m learning scripting to help my company parse its Airtable rich-text fields to HTML. It’s a big ask and I’m looking for guidance (my boss can’t afford this solution).

I installed the Script extension and am watching the official help videos, but the output from either a console.log or output.text doesn’t match the example values from the API help page. I.E.

From Output.text(fieldString): (from the preview window in the scripting editor)
The SO will:

1. Set up delegated Google Account to support the SO with delegation of ongoing security tasks

From API Example page:
“The SO will:\n1. Set up delegated Google Account to support the SO with delegation of ongoing security tasks \n”

I read this official Airtable Markdown article, but found little help in how I can work with the contents, so that I can eventually learn the Regex expressions to parse them into HTML.

Any help on how I can accomplish this within the Scripting extension? I feel working with the API on some local development program on my laptop is outside my comfort zone.

[kuovonne]

The sample output examples that you give look like they match to me. Note that \n represents a new line character.

The Scripting Extension has its own documentation, and its values are different from the REST API. However, both sets of documentation are casually referred to as "API"s.

Evan_Dumas:

so that I can eventually learn the Regex expressions to parse them into HTML.

I don’t recommend using REGEX to convert Markdown to HTML.

Instead, I recommend using a Markdown to HTML conversion library. You can Google for a free JavaScript library. Or you can use the markdown to html conversion service available in Make.

The right solution will be a balance between how much you want to learn, if you can learn enough in the time frame required. It is possible to have a free script that will convert markdown to html. But it requires knowing scripting.

[Evan_Dumas]

Thanks so much! I saw Showdown.js and it looks great, but I’ve read in the forums and in the documentation that Airtable’s Markdown flavor isn’t the same as regular Markdown. That makes me worried that any free parsing library won’t work on the rich text we have in Airtable.

We use Zappier and I tried building a Zap that formats Markdown to HTML but it didn’t work (which I believe is because of the non-standard Markdown that Airtable uses). If others have had success with this I can revisit the process and see if the failure wasn’t user error on my part.