💨 luft

An extremely simple Airtable client for JavaScript.

WARNING!

⚠️ This library is highly experimental, UNTESTED and likely to have breaking changes. It is not recommended to use it for anything serious. Unserious and mischievious use is encouraged.

Install

yarn add luft
 
// or
 
npm install luft

Usage example

An example that utilizes most options:

import { initialize, get } from 'luft';
 
initialize({
  baseId: '<your base id>',
  apiKey: '<your api key>',
});
 
const getUpcomingShows = async () => {
  let records;
  try {
    records = await get('Shows', {
      sort: [{ field: 'Date', direction: 'desc' }],
      populate: [
        {
          path: 'Venue',
          from: 'Venues',
          multi: false,
          fields: ['Address', 'City', 'Name'],
        },
        {
          path: 'With',
          from: 'Bands',
          multi: true,
          fields: ['Name']
        },
      ],
      filter: 'IS_AFTER({Date}, NOW())',
      toObject: true,
    });
  } catch (err) {
    // Error handling
  }
  return records;
};

Documentation

luft is a simplifying wrapper around airtable.js - the aim is not to reinvent the wheel but to simplify some things to allow for lightweight more implementations. You can use getBase as an escape hatch if necessary to use the full raw functionality.

Common parameters

All record getXYZ functions take the table name as the first param and support the following optional params:

• fields - an array of fieldnames to select
• sort - a list of sort objects with a field and optional direction keys (see api docs)
• filter - a filter formula (see the Formula field reference and api docs)
• populate - an array of population specs, see Population
• toObject - boolean, return raw airtable.js records or plain objects with all keys converted to camelCase - default false

To start initialize the connection

Initializes your Airtable instance. Only one base is supported.

import { initialize } from 'luft';
 
initialize({
  baseId: '<your base id>',
  apiKey: '<your api key>',
});
 
// Now do things, see below

Visit your account page to get your API key.
It's recommended to use environment variables here for security and flexibility.

Then get some docs

import { get } from 'luft';
 
// initialize...
 
const shows = await get('Shows', {
  // See common parameters
});

And getById one doc by its id

import { getById } from 'luft';
 
// initialize...
 
const shows = await getById('Shows', {
  recordId: 'abc123',
  // See common parameters
});
 

Or getByKey one doc by a key field of your choice

For example to use Airtable as a rudimentary CMS:

import { getByKey } from 'luft';
 
// initialize...
 
const homepageContent = await getById('Content', {
  key: 'home',
  field: 'page',
  // See common parameters
});

(protip: the rich text field type is Markdown)

Populate linked fields

This is where luft really goes 💨.
Pass an array of population specs to population to get linked fields from other tables.

Example:

import { getByKey } from 'luft';
 
// initialize...
 
await get('Shows', {
  populate: [
    {
      path: 'Venue',
      from: 'Venues',
      multi: false,
      fields: ['Address', 'City', 'Name'],
    },
    {
      path: 'With',
      from: 'Bands',
      multi: true,
      fields: ['Name']
    },
  ],
  // See common parameters, toObject will convert the populated fields as well
});

A population spec has:

• path - the field that you want to populate
• from - the table to get it from
• multi - whether to get one or multiple records (we can't tell this from the record sadly), you can safely leave this to true when in doubt to always get an array of results
• fields - an array of fieldnames to select in the target record

It is currently only possible to populate one level deep. (create an issue of you need more)

Escape hatch

luft uses airtable.js under the hood, you can get the raw base to write your own logic:

import { getBase } from 'luft';
 
// initialize...
 
const base = getBase()
 
base('Shows').destroy(['rec123ABC'])

Local Development

yarn dev

Runs the project in development/watch mode. The project will be rebuilt upon changes.

yarn build

Bundles the package to the dist folder. The package is optimized and bundled with Rollup into multiple formats (CommonJS, UMD, and ES Module).

yarn test

Runs the test watcher (Jest) in an interactive mode.

Notes

This project was bootstrapped with TSDX.

Some inspiration taken from https://github.com/Arro/airtable-json