using_httr

Airtable Upsert Example w/ httr

This example uses httr, a popular R HTTP client library to call the Airtable REST API's update/upsert multiple records endpoint. All input records are sent to the API endpoint and if the unique ID is present in an existing record, the existing record will be updated. If the unique value is not found, a new record will be created.

The example code in this repository assumes your base has a table with the following fields: First Name (Single line text), Last Name (Single line text), Unique ID (Single line text), Job Title (Single line text), and Hire Number (Number). You can create a copy of a sample base with 200 records pre-populated here.

---

The software made available from this repository is not supported by Formagrid Inc (Airtable) or part of the Airtable Service. It is made available on an "as is" basis and provided without express or implied warranties of any kind.

---

Local setup

1. Clone/unzip code
2. Copy .env.example to .env and populate values
3. (Optional) Modify input_records in example.R with new static values or dynamically fetched values from your source of choice (API, file, etc.)
4. Run Rscript example.R to run the example. Note that the first few lines install external dependencies which you may want to comment out once they have been added to your local R installation.

Key files and their contents

• example.R is the main code file which is executed when Rscript example.R is run. At a high level, it performs the following:

  • Loads dependencies and configuration variables
  • Defines a sample input_records array which should be modified to reference an external data source
  • In chunks of 10, sends records to the upsert endpoint which will result in records being updated or created based on the unique ID field(s) define

• .env.example is an example file template to follow for your own .env file. The environment variables supported are:

  • AIRTABLE_API_KEY - your Airtable personal access token; it will always start with pat; the scope data.records:write is required
  • AIRTABLE_BASE_ID - the ID of your base; you can find this on the base's API docs from https://airtable.com/api. This will always start with app
  • AIRTABLE_TABLE_ID - the ID of the table you want to create/update records in; you can find this in the URL of your browser when viewing the table. It will start with tbl
  • AIRTABLE_UNIQUE_FIELD_NAME_OR_ID - the field name or ID of the field that is used for determining if an existing records exists that needs to be updated (if no record exists, a new one will be created)

Notes

• The code in example.R has been setup to configure automatic retries if requests are rate limited
• The field used for uniqueness does not have to be the primary field.
• The field name or ID for the unique field is expected to remain consistent. If it changes, update the environment variable
• Each existing and new record (in input_records) is expected to have a value for the field used for uniqueness.
• Mockaroo was used to generate example data used in this example.