Public view of base's API documentation

[Scott_Nath]

Is there a way to make my base’s API documentation (found at airtable[dot]com/[ID]/api/docs) publicly viewable without an airtable sign-in?

Looking for something similar to the “Anyone can view (not edit)” option that a base has, but instead for the API docs.

thank you,
Scott

[Bill_French]

Scott_Nath:

publicly viewable without an airtable sign-in?

I’m almost certain this is not possible. But what is possible is that you could copy the docs and rehost.

One must ask though - if the base is public and you want to let anyone use the API to access it, why not ask API consumers to get an account, then share the base, then they can see the docs, right?

[Scott_Nath]

Hey Bill,

Copy/paste is not long-term practical as there would have to be process created to refresh that content on any changes to the base.

I’ve been researching systems like this for work and I used airtable’s automatically-created api docs as a top benefit of this service. Some use cases:

Use case 1: If I make an API public and want public users to query my cool API, then I’d want them to be able to know how easy it is to interact with without having to create a login to see the docs.

Use case 2: A development team working on an open source project that requires a specific data structure. Users who clone the project would be making their own clone of the app’s base when implementing, but the docs of the open source project may need to reference the API for various reasons. Requiring a login to view part of the project’s docs could be considered bad docs UX.

[Bill_French]

Scott_Nath:

I used airtable’s automatically-created api docs as a top benefit of this service.

Indeed - I wrote about this.