airtable2

An httr2-based Airtable client package. airtable2 is a refactor of airtabler originally by Darko Bergant and then extended by Collin Schwantes, Nathan Layman, and Noam Ross.

• Full CRUD for records, tables, and bases via the Airtable REST API
• Type-aware reading and writing: multiselect, linked records, attachments, collaborators, and barcodes as S3 list-columns
• DBI interface for use in standard database workflows and the RStudio/Positron connection pane
• Backup/restore with air_dump() / air_restore()
• Metadata management with air_meta() / air_schema()
• Joins between local data frames and Airtable tables
• Attachment downloads and uploads (parallelized)
• API call tracking to stay within free-tier limits

For LLM-assisted development: the primary documentation source is https://noamross.github.io/airtable2/llms.txt

Installation

# From R-universe (recommended)
install.packages("airtable2", repos = c("https://noamross.r-universe.dev", "https://cloud.r-project.org"))

# From GitHub (or use pak::pkg_install() or renv::install())
remotes::install_github("noamross/airtable2")

Demo

air_demo() gives you a quick interactive tour of features once you have credentials set up. It requires a token and a Workspace ID where it will set up a demonstration Airtable.

air_set_token("your_personal_access_token")
air_demo(workspace_id = "wspXXXXXXXXXXXXXX") 

See the Getting Started vignette for details on setting up credentials.

Quick start

library(airtable2)

# Set credentials (or use AIRTABLE_API_KEY / AIRTABLE_BASE_ID env vars)
air_set_token("your_personal_access_token")
air_set_base("appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX")

# Confirm access
at_sitrep()

# Read a table
df <- air_read("My Table")

# Write new rows
air_write(df, "My Table")

# Upsert (update matching rows, insert new ones)
air_upsert(df, "My Table", merge_on = "Name")

# Sync (diff-based: only send changes, delete removed rows)
air_sync(df, "My Table", key = "Name")

DBI interface

con <- DBI::dbConnect(airtable2(), base_id = "appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX")
DBI::dbListTables(con)
DBI::dbReadTable(con, "My Table")
DBI::dbDisconnect(con)

Special types

Airtable complex field types are returned as S3 list-columns and display compactly in tibbles:

df <- air_read("My Table")
# multiselect fields  -> <air_multiselect>  (e.g. sel[])
# linked records      -> <air_links>         (e.g. lnk[])
# attachments         -> <air_attachments>   (e.g. att[])
# collaborators       -> <air_collaborator>  (e.g. collab)

# Flatten to character for spreadsheet-style use
df$Tags <- air_flatten_multiselect(df$Tags)

# Or flatten all complex columns at once
df_flat <- air_simplify(df)

Backup and restore

# Full backup with attachments
air_dump("appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX", dir = "backup/")

# Restore from backup
air_restore("backup/")

Documentation

• Getting started vignette: credentials, API limits, full walkthrough
• Special types: multiselect, attachments, linked records
• Metadata & backup: schema, dump/restore
• Full reference: pkgdown site
• llms.txt: LLM-readable index of all docs