Store data in Airtable

Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid. Note that because Val Town uses Deno, we use an unofficial library to access Airtable.

Setup#

On the homepage, click Start from scratch to create a base:

If prompted with automatic setup, click Skip. You should get a new base with a blank table.

Adjust the table fields as you want (note that this isn't covered by this guide).

Click on your profile icon, then on Developer hub:

Click Create new token.

Fill out the fields:

• Name: Any. For example, valtown.
• Scopes: You'll most likely want to add data.records:read and data.records:write.
• Access: Add the base you created earlier.

Lastly, click Create token. Here's an example of how your settings could probably look like:

Copy your token and click Done.

Go to val.town, click on your username and then on Env Variables:

Click New env variable. Set the key to a name you want to use to reference the token (for example, airtable_pat) and paste the copied personal access token into the value, then click Add.

You can then use Airtable from val.town like so:

import { Airtable } from "https://deno.land/x/airtable@v1.1.1/mod.ts";

const airtable = new Airtable({
  apiKey: Deno.env.get("airtable_pat"),
  baseId: "appXSrKDlwbAijRmD",
  tableName: "All content",
});
// Sample data from: https://blog.airtable.com/database-vs-spreadsheet/
const results = await airtable.select();
console.log(results);

Make sure to change:

• apiKey if you have used a different name for your environment variable.
• baseId to the ID of your base. You can find it in the URL bar while a table is open and it will likely start with app:

• tableName to either the name of your table or the table ID which can also be found in the URL after the base ID (see above).